In a child’s treasure box you’ll find
a leaf, flower, or petal
once lovely,
chosen for its fragrance or
the promise of colour
broadening the senses
like a never-tasted flavour;

A rock, stone, or pebble
of indeterminate origin,
chosen for its shape,
heft, and texture, the left-overs
of creation’s crashing asteroids
imagined to contain
the footprint of a dinosaur or fern,
or worn smooth by water
into the irregular form of a heart;

A piece of beach glass,
imagined to be a jewel;

The shell of a long-dead
animal of land or river,
polished clean by grit and seagulls,
because mortality has its own beauty;

The words of a story,
bible verse, or limerick
faithfully copied 
and mostly rightly spelled;

A marble, bead, or bouncy ball
snuck away from the common collection
not to be played with except surreptitiously,
an early experiment in sequestration
deemed a certain, if lonely, success;

Some fur, the collar, or faded photo
of the much-loved pet now
buried beneath the flagstones
of the new back patio;

A single wrapped sweet,
for emergencies.

In the child’s treasure box
you will find
the decadent, sticky scent of optimism,
dust of a thousand lives unlived,
a heart of flesh, calcifying,
hope adrift on an ocean of memories
whose swell and valleys may
at any moment inundate.

This upcoming Sunday’s Gospel reading includes Jesus’ aphorism: “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Luke 12:34 and parallels). Last week, looking for something I have already forgotten, I found at the back of my bedside drawer the name tag of my grandmother’s dog, which I have apparently and largely unknowingly kept for some forty years; hence this poem.