The Cosmic Lost and Found: An Anthology of Missouri Poets

The Cosmic Lost & Found


If there's a cosmic lost and found
and you know where to find it
then you know where I'll be
heaped on top of a pile
of discarded whatevers
lost gloves
and scarves and hats
an inexplicable bathrobe
a number of solo socks
your copy of the Tao te Ching
by Ursula le Guin
the necklace you stole
from your mother
that reminded her
of your father
the keys to the lock
on your glovebox
but not whatever
is trapped in there.

I'm sifting through both
things utterly forgotten and things
that plague you with the nagging
question of where you left them.

I sit on an infinity of bobby pins
and rubber bands
the frame containing
all but the senior year photos
of your son, even the one
where he wore the aubergine beret
there's your ring in the shape
of a leaping horse Nicki lost
there's the leather belt you tooled
in 8th grade shop class with the letters
R O Y, for your grandfather
centered between filigrees
on my lap is the white cat
that ran away one spring
who had white eyes and a fat belly
lying with his head on my knee
is your golden retriever
which your step-father sold
for killing the grass along the fence-line
where he ran and ran.

My bed is made of all the junk mail
never read and never missed
and notebooks lost with only
a few front pages filled with
the insecure marks of hesitant youth
somewhere around here
is your first Danzig cassette
that Bob Dylan poster
and the tape with your father's voice
which you never did listen to
all the way through
because it made you cry so hard.

There I am adrift
amidst these oddments
the keeper of the left behind
the recorder of what's missing.

There's me whistling
a little tune
you made up
when you were nine
about the clouds
and the horses.

There's me
waiting to be found.

-Jeanette Powers