Treasure Box

My first treasure box
was a cigar box from Cuba,
a common object in the fifties,
and it included;

rhinestones from a red party dress,
the gold chain, from my baby bracelet,
several silver shells from my conche belt,
and a faded picture of my grandmother,

a woman I never knew except through
the stories my dad told like when he
was three years old and fell in a hole,

his mother and aunt laughed out loud,
and how much he liked
making people laugh after that

and when she cried every day because
her five sons went off to war
and how she offered her life for
their safe return and died a year
after the last one came home

and how my smile reminded him of her
except she had blue eyes so that made her pretty.

I buried the treasure in the back yard one afternoon
and haven't thought about it until today.