I have always owned a ring box, inside it a dancing bug

Hand carved with love, from a grandpa who was dead

long before he died.

I open it when I am worn away, like a stone beneath a seaside

Shrinking into myself, until I am sand along the river bed

and I am reminded,

I have always wanted to be grit, and rough like a ranger

Like my grandpa who was, in lots of ways, Clint Eastwood

just from Utah.

But I don’t keep hooks for baling hay, and I’ve never roped a steer

The knives I keep are cookware, and would never carve a thing

except, on holidays.

So I won’t whittle any bugs, or work through any winter

In the ankle deep snow and slush, I will instead be here

behind a desk.

I build my memories not by carving things, but by carving beings

And while I have my wits about me, I will not forget my memory of

people and places I love.

If my carving comes about, and someday I am lucky to have my own

My grandchildren will know me, not by the things that made me, me

but instead by being

My greatest offering to them will be my very memory, the thing which

Everyone forgets is all I have to give. In stories and poems and songs

and carved up turkey.

I will not die before I am dead. Instead, I will live through memories

Others have of me. That way, when I wake up groggy and confused

on Christmas Eve.

It will not be your worry, 

To remember my name.

It will be mine, through

everything I’ve told you.

Stowed away in a ring box, inside it a singing man.

No grit within his bones

All of it washed away and mixed

Into the sand.