(Unpublished) #Poem: “Lost Things”
I wrote this poem in 2006 with an array of ideas and people in mind. Sometimes, people discard us, believing then that it is feasible and practical to do that, only to find out later that they need, or at least want, us back in their lives. This is a poem about letting go of those people.
Lost Things
Like stones that sink, I glow in the river bed,
and tinkling sunlight spreads out and stripes me
with gold.
Like weeds that plagued your garden,
was I pesky but now more useful since
you turned me under so I would refresh
the soil?
Like water in a drain, I left
as naturally as gravity, just
after you had used me, but you think about
me now and then, when your wasteful habits
become apparent.
Unless gliding off
a mountaintop is weak, neither am I.
No
more glory days, since one link in one chain
broke one time, and cannot be fixed now,
since the loose end was too short and useless
to escape the trash pile.
Now, returning
to the fountain, you can’t tell which penny
was yours.
I’m watching you, looking up at
your warped silhouette, and remembering,
which changes nothing.
We’re stranded in two
elements, and yours is dry, and that’s not
my problem.
That penny in that well, the one
you tossed so you could make a wish, is now
the difference between starving and not,
and that’s also not my problem.
I might miss you,
some days, but far be it from me to say :
Come live here with me, in this wishing well.
About ten years ago, I all but quit submitting poems to literary magazines and began sharing a few here. To read previous (Unpublished) #Poem posts, each with its own mini-introduction, click on the title below:
(Unpublished) #Poem: “Taking Root”
(Unpublished) #Poem: “Sabbatical”
(Unpublished) #Poem: “Southern Soil”
(Unpublished) #Poem: [Untitled]
(Unpublished) #Poem: “Reading Kenko”
(Unpublished) #Poem: “Five or Six”
(Unpublished) #Poem: “Curb Market, Saturday Morning”
(Unpublished) #Poem: “The Greatest Unknown
