Among earlier scenes in the movie Velvet Goldmine, I particular remember there's one where little Curt Wild got pushed and punched in a boys' marble contest. He, by some unknown luck, had won a whole pit of marbles and had been trying to carry all of them in his thin pockets when the teacher started to whistle everybody on the playground back.

As the whole world watched on, little Curt dragged his feet as a result of the heaviness in his pockets. He was doomed to be ridiculed when the pockets gave away the holding function and let all the marbles bouncing to the ground as if the same magic that came to help with the winning now dissolved in the air within few seconds. All the boys turned and were too shocked by the sight of this tragic happening to fully comprehend little Curt's encounter with certain mysterious layer in the universe into which he was sent.

Marbles, flipping cards, collectors' buttons and bottle caps, through this channel or that, they come into the child's world and take his/her breath away. They are the currency in a children's wonderland, stimulating a child's greed. Or they resemble the unobtainable, the unfulfilled longing, the unspoken secrets shared with a friend who you are never to see again but whose laughter and scream in thrilling moments you pin up on the wall of your attic room and whose ghost you carry along and stretch it well into adulthood.

Following is a poem that I read on Shana's blog that I really liked.
Marbles
I found your marbles in your
room tucked in the same blue velvet
Crown Royal bag, the gold rope of the cord
still securing your childhood.
I assure you, I opened the bag as if it were
holding all the secrets of your paleolithic world.
And the marbles rolled out—
each smooth round noise.
Small marbled pommels,
kept inside so long, barely remembering
your ten-year-old hands sizing them up.
How your own brown eye would squint down—
marvel the ophthalmic wonders.
But you were never so proud, your perfect
pale blue marble, lightning gold
running through it, its pain line
staying with you all your forty-four years.
So let me hold you my blue marble.
Let me warm you, finally, in my hands.
---by Laura Lush