And of course haven’t met all the members, but I ran into one last night I took my apprenticeship with… thirty years ago. I hadn’t seen him, really, in all that time.

he was hale and hearty, and had retired and come back, a couple times. It was good to see he’d survived.

He had news of old friends who didn’t. Guys who lived hard and didn’t last. We talked about family members and how time changes us.

When we meet old friends
it’s like a time capsule
a box to be opened
will it be full of pain
or will it bring back joy?

A rubber band
around a stack of trading cards
a roll of caps and a cap gun
trigger so coarsely made it hurts your finger to pull
but you do anyway

a sucrets box with pretty stones
gleaned from a hundred beaches
a piece of cotton padding
a tiny, spiral shell.

The memories those meetings dredge up
are beyond our control
no knowing if the remembrance
will make us smile or cry

I jam my hands into the debris
and try to sieve the pain through my fingers
and filter out only the good moments
Sometimes I succeed.