I’m looking now at a wooden box, small and strange in form

Not practical really as a box for containing things of real value

For this box was not made for that purpose, but rather for the sake of art

And artistic it is indeed, in a fanciful and lighthearted way

Fantastic really in its composition and design

The container part, its belly so to speak, as we soon will learn

Is a cube abstractly gilded in gold and silver foil

This stands on four long legs, one in each its corners

Legs tapered from small to smaller, but in proportion and not quite spindly 

They’re painted with alternating stripes of black and white

Atop the box there sits a fitted lid, a gilded square, and then a gilded disk

Constituting, perhaps, a neck above the belly just below

And then a human head, of sorts, purple in color and distorted in its form

It’s too tall for its narrow width, eyes too high, nose too long, lips too low

And there are curlicues for horns and a topknot of decreasing spheres

So now we ask what purpose this might serve, this strange and gilded box

Does its art constitute its total worth, or is there something else

Perhaps it has a better use, as a memory thing perhaps

A repository for memories or of special things, almost like a funeral urn

And yes, we find, that is indeed the case

I found it quite by accident when I’d knocked the object over on my desk

The top came off and out there fell a tiny golden ring, a child’s ring

It was just a painted toy, but still a treasure, and I was sure of that

For my granddaughter, a dear sweet child of four, had said it was

And told me how she’d put it in a secret place known to her alone

She told me how its magic could hold the love she had for us

And how, from its secret place, her love could be forever present

To spread throughout our hearts and home

And that may be true, for just the thought of that ring in the wooden box

Brings joyous memories of that child, held forever in that memory box