Time Capsule
Michael Meyerhofer

I guess you know by now
who gets to survive the plague,
what became of the lunatic
with nukes in his garden,
if that missing blonde turned up
frightened but breathing
just across state lines.
I wonder if you still have bees,
glaciers, Palestinians,
if anyone figured out how
to transform cash back into blood.
As you can see, we found just
enough time to gather
around an iron box
that, for once, holds nothing
dead—more like holiday
ornaments you won’t understand
though we like to imagine
you grasping such edges,
washing each lie in sunlight.

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Michael Meyerhofer’s Comments

Even though this didn’t make it into the poem, another thing I was thinking about at the time was Haley’s Comet, which last swung ’round when I was 8. I remember not being able to see it (too cloudy) and thinking that I’d be a then-incomprehensibly old man when I got my next chance―which got me thinking about the ways we divide (and disregard) time, what makes it to the surface and what gets forgotten, no matter how tightly we try to hold on.

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