No one remembers for sure where it is. 
Twelve of us ages six through eleven
buried it more than thirty years ago
where we went to school at Tamarack Brook, 
a place whose location we described in song 
as the belly button of Vermont. 

Was it by birch trees under the stone wall? 
What about at the north edge of the grounds? 
Or next to that big rock in the pasture
behind the house: where we had snowball fights,
played soccer, journaled, climbed a tall white pine
up to higher branches with each ascent

then back to ground, our hands sticky from pitch, 
unable to wash it off at the sink 
inside the barn where we were taught subjects
such as Abenaki culture, Halley’s comet,
and beaver dam ecology; the pond
across the street a fine example? 

If we figure out where to dig it up –
this trove of drawings and essays, clippings 
from newspapers and magazines, photos –
we might for a moment be transported
to a time when we saw the world as new,
yearning for us to learn of its bounty.