The Glass Jar Present
Don Webb
Everything we perceive comes to us from the past.
Everything we do goes into the future. — proverb
Fil, grandson of Filip, grandson of Phillip, discovers
a large glass jar in the side of a mound.
It will be a prize for his tribe’s mothers,
if he retrieves it safe and sound.
What worldly dominion must it represent,
he wonders. Who made it, long ago, and how?
He will bring it home as an explorer’s present
to re-present what once was but cannot be now.
Fil trudges carefully with his prize down Phillip’s midden.
Will the jar be used for cooking or as a shrine?
What other treasures of the past are hidden
in vaults to which he — up or down — will climb?
Copyright © 2015 by Don Webb
