On Finding Ike and Ian Truck, Between Two Couplets, May 19, 2026
- May 21
- 2 min read
The morning rain pours down like heavy tears,
To wake a memory lost for all the years.
I hold a piece of plastic and metal in the garage,
amidst the cardboard and the inventory of a routine evening,
and feel the sudden jolt of a lightning rod.
There it sat, on the very top of the plastic tub
a tiny, forgotten echo from a CVS aisle in Griffin,
where my father once laughed out loud,
seeing two names aligned by chance on a cardboard backing:
Ike and Ian.
One name for Pop’s secret writer’s skin,
his name of his grandfather, Ike
and one for the little boy he loved.
Ian adored that truck.
It was a heavy, tangible bridge to his Granddaddy,
the man who fought a long, quiet war against the fading of his mind,
the man who deserved a justice the world’s lawyers wouldn't fight for,
while I kept watch in the quiet room,
measuring time in spoonfuls and clean sheets.
Ian was there.
He was my right hand when my knees gave way,
lifting me up from the ground at the funeral mass,
carrying the weight when the grief was too heavy for me to bear alone.
He loved his Granddaddy.
Now the garage is quiet, save for the tape guns and the sorting.
David saved it, a decade ago, a silent custodian of an unknown treasure,
tucking it away until it surfaced tonight like a message in a bottle.
I cannot send it across the silence of this year and a half.
The boundary stands, rigid and aching.
But I hold it anyway.
I hold it for the little boy who left it behind,
and I keep it for the baby who bears the name
Henry, the old English root of our Dutch bloodline,
Hendricks meaning son of Henry,
an ancient patronymic blooming backwards into the future.
It rests in my hands now:
not inventory,
not junk,
but my small, die-cast prayer
waiting for the day I can pass it down,
from the father I miss,
through the hands that remember,
to the grandson who is just beginning.
The shadows fade, the hidden path is clear,
What once was lost is found and treasured here.
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