What will become of the toys? Not the
Cabbage Patch and Barbie dolls
that began their slow dust box journey
to Goodwill years ago, but the unmarked G.I. Joes
planted three to four feet deep
below the backyard's Augusta grass.
And not just resting below the grass
that stained-killed six childrens worth
of jeans before they could become hand-me-downs,
but tied up between cottonwood
and peach tree roots, so that their grave
becomes their living quilt becomes their prison.
These plastic men fought, died,
resurrected, died again bravely so often
that their cartoon-inspired bravery
was lost, like their location, in repetition.
I have always meant to find them again.
But perhaps what I really miss is the house,
in memory no longer the decayed beast it is.
Or not the house I miss, so much
as its attic's confusion of wood, wiring,
and powertools collecting dust as my father,
once a month, moves infinitesimally closer
to sculpting it as a bedroom. Or no, not
the attic, but the pear tree that I miss,
grown back fruitless after I broke it in two
in misdirected revenge against my brother who dared
beat me in a game of football. Who will
tell the new owners of its struggle
when they uproot it to make room for a pool?
How will they ever know that
before our stone-walled, carefully landscaped,
stepped garden was a hill where we buried
treasure, or tin-foil wrapped stacks
of now decaying baseball cards.
What will they make of all this
when they accidentally dig it up one day
and wonder, or worse, fail to wonder?
Who will there be to remember
exactly where behind the air conditioner
a stray cat gave birth to ten still-born kittens?
But fur disintegrates. Not
like plastic toys or children playing their imagined
world like a fine tuned violin. What I mind
is this immortal plastic—
what will these strangers make of it?
Or worse, what if they aren't the type
to go 'round the yard with shovels and plastic
detectors? And after several of these owners
what if they finally realize how worn a house
becomes, burdened with 8x20 years
of memory. What if they tear the whole block down,
bring in some life-sized model of the toy
bulldozers and cement trucks
that are also probably buried there,
and then erect a parking lot.
My God, what will become of the toys?