There it is again,
that open box so familiar.
Yet I can’t put a name to it.
“Have one they were always your favorite.”
Yes, the dark ones.
I remember the dark ones.
Of all there is,
I remember the dark ones.
I remember their shape
and especially their smell,
but their name still eludes me,
please tell, please tell.
“Have one, they’re Munchkins.
Always your favorite.
A few for me but for you
they’re mostly chocolate.”
My Munchkin memories
are all I’ve got.
They’re not named
for being short,
but for being what they’re not.
Munchkins don’t leave
a doughnut whole.
Like me, they leave
an aught, a hole.
A nothing, a zero, a naught, a hole.
A knot when words will not come,
thus, making me become the one
not able to sing my songs
of joy or pain or sorrow.
Long term loss confines me to
a home where no one goes,
this home of brick and mortar,
where soap and sorrows flow.
Your visits lend me
memories to borrow;
lying here I stare at you,
vacant, empty, hollow,
all alone in this bed,
unable to see tomorrow.
R. K. Olson ©2020
In memory of my mother.
Once a week, she would bring coffee and a box of donut holes (munchkins) to my fathers’ cabinet shop where he and I worked until he passed away in 1975. She kept this up till 1988 when I closed the business. After that every time I visited her I would drive her to the local Dunkin Donuts where we sat and reminisce the good old days.
Funny, the coffee and the donuts seemed to be better back then.
0 Comments