Davy Crockett December 13, 2o15

A Facebook friend posted a story about his mother dying. He had to go to her house and clean up and basically get her belongings ready for storage. He came across this big box stuffed in her hall closet. He opened it up and found this old Davy Crockett lunch box that his mom had gotten him when he was a kid (he's in his sixties now). That she had kept this one thing all these years made him a little teary-eyed. I may have felt a few drops of eyeball rain gathering in my baby blues. I also got a great idea for this poem.

Davy Crockett

I never was a keeper of things.

That Davy Crockett raccoon cap
I begged my mother for? Wore it
a few times before I shoveled it
into the closet never to be seen again.

And Superman flying through the metallic air

on a genuine Aladdin Industries lunch box.
The thermos shattered after three days,
my boloney sandwich covered in milky blood.
The Caped Crusader tossed into the trash.

Some grunts gave me a lighter the day I left Nam.

“From the Boys in the Nasty” engraved on
its stainless steel body. I lost it between Okinawa
and the airport in Guam as I hustled my way
back to the world, to the good ol’ U.S. of A.

And love? A dozen girls tossed aside

sometimes broken by my carelessness,
sometimes they broke me, tossed me out
or like that furry Davy Crockett hat, left me
in the darkest corner of a cluttered closet

But a ratty pair of pea green Chucks

I bought back in two thousand six
stayed with me until they fell apart.
They now hang like a trophy
on a doorknob in my apartment.

why’d I keep a pair of worn-out tennies

and not the Crockett hat, or the lunch box
(even though the thermos was busted to shit)
or that one girlfriend who never hurt me?
I never worried about losing that lighter.

Maybe it’s just that when you’re young

losing things don’t bother you so much.
Maybe age tends to make you wanna
hang on to things , anything for as long
as you can even when you don’t want to

Woodie 12-13-15