The Cache
By
Dan Gerber
Behind the house in a field
there's a metal box I buried
full of childhood treasure, a map
of my secret place, a few lead pennies
from 1943.
The rest I've forgotten,
forgotten even the exact spot
I covered with moss and loam.
Now I'm back and twenty years
have made so little difference
I suspect they never happened,
this face in the mirror
aged with pencil and putty.
I suspect even
the box has moved as a mole would move
to a new place long ago.
there's a metal box I buried
full of childhood treasure, a map
of my secret place, a few lead pennies
from 1943.
The rest I've forgotten,
forgotten even the exact spot
I covered with moss and loam.
Now I'm back and twenty years
have made so little difference
I suspect they never happened,
this face in the mirror
aged with pencil and putty.
I suspect even
the box has moved as a mole would move
to a new place long ago.
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Disclaimer
We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2017 by Dan Gerber, "The Cache," from Particles: New & Selected Poems, (Copper Canyon Press, 2017). Poem reprinted by permission of Dan Gerber and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.