Dust to Dust

My shovel turns soil laced with earthworm burrows and thread-like roots.

I find treasure:

a tiny metal car missing its wheels,

a time capsule left by little boys some thirty years or more

before I decreed this space a garden.

They carved out roads, built bridges and dug holes for their dozers and trucks.

One of them sleeps in some distant red clay soil, outlived by the iris and spirea in my garden.

What I have left are memories

and little toy cars to find in unexpected places

left by one unaware that his days were already numbered

while he pushed toy cars through mounds of dust

in a future garden

planted by his mother’s aging hands.