sonora2sonoma

An old cardboard box

Yellowed with age, dust-covered and disheveled

Consigned to a corner of an all but forgotten garage

Three counties, two regions and a world away from home

Filled with notes on paper, newspaper clippings, song scraps

 

Old letters from friends of yore, some forgotten,

Others unforgettable

 

Tickets from the Beatles concert I attended with my first wife in 1966.

 

Missives, memos, epistles, epithets, curated for a future viewing

Songs sung of foolish youthful things

And things not so foolish

From a time when the promise of a lifetime lay sparkling in the bright sunshine

Like a carpet spreading thither leading the way to countless tomorrows.

 

*****

 

An old cardboard box

 

Bursting with old quotes & secret messages

Some so secret the recorder has forgotten their meaning

 

If history is written by its survivors,

It would seem these artifacts have plenty to say

And if it’s wrong, who’s to question it?

The dead have forgotten their voices!

 

Random nameless images frozen on forgotten film strips

Ferreted away in friendly colored but unlabeled film canisters

 

Slides of Elvin Bishop tearing it up at Avery Ranch, circa 1989

 

A slide viewer emerges from the depths of the box

Complete with corroded batteries.

A little sandpaper, some fresh power, and

A window to the past emerges, a glimpse back to 1989

And, suddenly, it’s Sarah’s birthday party again!

Just like it happened yesterday

 

Except everyone looks, well, older!

If history is written by the survivors . . .

The admixture is bound to be colored thereby.

The loudest voices are not always the ones that persist,

The ones whose refrains echo down through the ages.

 

But nobody’s words or deeds can stem the inexorable tide of aging

Not even, and especially not

Michael Jackson’s plastic surgeon.

 

*****

An old cardboard box

 

Sentence fragments scrawled on aging paper

 

Notes on how to live

Reminders–“forget yourself”

 

Bits of poetry

“Soul food–a beautiful morning sandwich and a glass of rain”

 

Bits of nonsense

“Aunt Geronimo’s mayonnaise-flavored syrup”

 

Happy thoughts

“It was such a beautiful morning I made a sandwich of it

and took it to a friend”

 

Song bits

“Well, I’m from a small town, true and real

If a neighbor farts, it’s a great big deal.

The sheriff’s related to half the town

And maybe even to Edmund Brown.”

 

A different verse from a poem ends with “and my life has hardly begun . . . ”

 

*****

 

An old cardboard box

 

Stuffed with the flotsam and jetsam of emergence,

Of a young mind’s yearning

To know itself, to make sense of that which wasn’t

Making any sense at all!

Which at the time was practically everything.

 

*****

 

An old cardboard box

An interruption from another time

Full of sage words and youthful nonsense

Information without structure

Memorabilia minus meaning

Trifling trivia, mysterious memes and obstreperous optics

 

A conundrum of half-built constructions

Sidelined by distractions

And left forgotten along the way

 

All carefully placed

Within a cardboard cache, a curious keep

A confusion of a time capsule

Whose contents unveil more questions than answers

 

Just as it was when the box was loaded . . .

 

Only now,

At this juncture,

I am supplied with a better set of questions.

 

Tim Konrad

April 16, 2019

Sonora, CA