Proust In A Lunchbox Poem by Raj Dronamraju

What triggered my memory was a metal lunch box
The kind construction workers carry
And I thought of how as a child the construction workers I saw in a McDonalds
With their big metal lunchboxes
Ordering a coffee or a soft drink
So they would be allowed to sit there while they ate their lunch

And one of them had only one arm
It was the first time I had seen a man with one arm
The pink stump twitched in Ronald McDonald's shadow

Everyone will share a coffin
But such imagery is all we have
To replenish minds incapable of thought
When you see a long ago visual resurface and it pulls a trigger
The power is deep and immediate
Deeper and more immediate than words