A TREASURE CAN BE ANYTHING

Imagine, if you can, a perfect silver box with enameled lid of black and green
the size of the largest Brazil nut ever put in a Christmas stocking
and of that shape which really is no shape at all but a presence.

Open it with your mind’s fingers and let your mind’s eyes see inside
the even small stones, four gray, one brown, and one like the planet Saturn
in those images reconstituted from radio impulses beamed from deep in space.

Then see the three rounded sea-worn glass pebbles like jewels,
amethyst and two emeralds more precious than any that ever came from Brazil,
fit for a king’s crown, but here for me to keep forever in my treasure chest.

One tiny sea shell is there and another only slightly larger and perhaps rarer
because it’s a perfect blending of color and form and flawless fabrication.
Both were houses once for creatures that lived their lives beneath the sea.

Altogether they are eleven elements in my life that were not there before today,
and I will keep them knowing how years from now they will help me remember
a day, a walk beside the sea, and a friend who knows the value of such things.