An Old Cigar Box (Poetic Prose)

An Old Cigar Box


An old cigar box, I bought it about thirty years ago, or so, it has a date on it, that reads “1900” in big black trimmed letters (and its dark brown, and shadowy wood, with a bluish old ribbon that once was, now faded into its grain) and it looks all that old, and for some odd reason I treat it like gold, as it watches me grow older and older and older. It has glass even inside it, and fancy trimmings around the edges up and down, and around and over the top and under, and some old trim, that reads: “M. Kratchvill’s, La Crosse, Wis.” On the back, it reads No 45; a stamp here and there, I found it in a hamlet, in Minnesota, in an antique shop, and I keep old pictures of me inside it, I wish it could talk—perhaps on death and the many faces it has seen, and its many owners, now forgotten, long gone. It is a hundred and nine years old this year this old, old wooden cigar box, that doesn’t talk, or walk, but just is, where did Thou carelessly lie? Buried in ease among antiques, and sloth? Only once used by cigars, then, hence thy silence was. Let these words quicken thee: who, as in the morning I lay sleeping, thinking, restless, at night I pace creeping, I see you, you, always you, gleaming—and on your blessed smile lies: a fatal presence in my room, that I will be among those long forgotten faces soon.

No: 2636/ 6-29-2009