Not About Nostalgia

Not About Nostalgia

The second graders drop colored sand into plastic tubes,
layering the different hues to create their own personal
rainbows, viled tightly upon completion with a cork. Hers says
ROYGBIV, but his says GYGYGY because he likes the Green

Bay Packers, green and yellow, because his dad likes the Green
Bay Packers because his dad (GYGYGY's grandpa) grew up in a
small Wisconsin town, where he bartered cow muscle to
neighbors and strangers, pat pat patted

into hearty disks. They make a bump thump if you drop 'em:
napsack of flour meets hard wood, a gift bag fat
with smoothied potatoes dropped in an empty kitchen, plopping
a puppy on a bed of red shag. It flops thick and matte, unlike the

pop of his grandson's test tube as the boy-turning-man accidentally
champagnes John Deere pixie dust across his closet. He's lost
most of the thoughts, memories, little critters scaling the folds
of his brain, holding snapshots of things like grandpa and

the Green Bay Packers.