Peekaboo Pill Box

The blue plastic peekaboo pill boxes

Of my required medications

Tease me each morning while they

Reveal what needs to be ingested

To keep my body viable, today.

And incidentally,

The empty blue plastic peekaboo pill boxes

Tell what days are empty, 

Used up, consumed, and discarded

Into the maybe I'll remember bin.

It didn't use to be this way.

I used to know what time it was

By the position of the sun,

By the tugging of my stomach,

Whispering, feed me, when I was at the beach.

Even though I know what day it is,

According to the empty blue plastic peekaboo pill box,

I can't help but wonder who

Snuck in and stole all the days before.

I look in the mirror and see a body,

The same one I saw yesterday

But not the one I saw sixty years ago,

When I got out of bed on a lazy summer morn,

When there were no

Blue plastic peekaboo pill boxes

Waiting for me.

Now, I see my childhood friends

Who look like old people,

As old as my grandparents,

Wrinkled, grey haired, and slow,

With their own

Blue plastic peekaboo pill boxes

Teasing them in the morning.

Overgrown distorted freckles

Decorate my hands and arms.

Where did they come from?

Did they hop on my arms

Last summer on my hundred mile

Bike ride to San Diego?

When I was 12 I rode 12 miles to

Knotts Berry Farm and thought

That it took all day,

Because it did, back then, before

Empty blue plastic peekaboo pill boxes

Told me what day it was yesterday.

Who are these kids that call me grandpa?

Who want me to pick them up or

Who wrap themselves around my leg,

Sitting on my feet, laughing, and giggling,

While I carry them one leg lift at at time?

I wonder if one day they, too, will have

Empty blue plastic peekaboo pill boxes

Telling they what day was yesterday,

And giving them the wherewithal

To ride their bikes 100 miles to San Diego?