“If I could save time in a bottle,” sang Jim Croce, “the first thing that I’d like to do, is to save, every day, til eternity passes away, just to spend them with you.”

What is a time capsule, but time somehow encapsulated, in what – ?

A photograph.
A ticket stub.
A newspaper clipping.
A windup penguin.
A lock of hair.
A campaign bumper sticker.
A bullet casing.
A necklace.
A bottle of beer.

You laugh, but the Egyptians did it. Though as I recall, the beer wasn’t that good. Would what we leave behind be any better a thousand years from now? Two thousand?

What does it matter what’s buried and entombed?

It is a reflection of lives lived, and a time of existence.

We cannot capture time in a bottle. We cannot save up past eternity.

Eternity, Joseph Campbell said, is here and now.

Be present. Don’t collect time, spend it.

[Prompt 5: You find a time capsule buried in the backyard of your new home (or anywhere else, depends on you). What’s in it? How old is it or its probable story is up to the poet.]