Have you ever gone through a box of old stuff in the attic and found something that you’d almost forgotten, perhaps something from your childhood? I once did that, rediscovering an amazing cutaway illustration from 1978 of NASA’s space shuttle by Barron Storey. It had been carefully folded and put away, probably when I was still in elementary school. Today I hung that poster in a library at home that’s filled with children’s books. Here in Houston, where the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center is located, I hope that my two boys will be just as curious about outer space as I was.

Many years from now, when they’re older, my sons might be fascinated to see that same poster in Super 8, a movie about an alien from the mysterious Area 51 that was directed by J.J. Abrams and produced by Steven Spielberg. Take a look at it:

So this week’s haiku theme is childhood artifacts. It might be about something that survives to this day or that you wish had been preserved through the years but wasn’t. It might be something that brings you great joy or, perhaps, great sadness as you think back to an earlier chapter in your own life or in the life of someone else. Translate that memory into one verse of poetry with five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second line, and five syllables in the third line, like this:

NASA’s space shuttle —
once a dream in this poster,
now gone like childhood.