Lost - July 4 2021

 

Lost

July 4 2021

I admit.

I once stalked around the house, on the warpath

hunting for the glasses I lost.

Which, it turns out

had been pushed back on my head

all along.

     . . . It happens.

But the scissors I dropped in the garden

have truly totally vanished.

As if my modest rural property

was a crease in the continuum,

the singular place

where time and space intersect,

a portal

to another dimension

we have not as yet discovered.

I console myself with this.

The scissors, after all, are replaceable.

But their loss has helped me to wonder

about possibility.

About whether the unknowns

outweigh the knowns.

And whether the physical laws

that govern the universe

can, at times, be broken.

My scissors fell

down a black hole.

Have they materialized somewhere else?

Like the socks, lost in the dryer.

The brilliant thought

that would change the world

if only I hadn't forgotten it.

The powerful dream

that seemed vividly real

in the liminal grog of awakening,

but then slipped from my grasp

in the harsh light of day.

Or perhaps I will stumble on them

next spring.

The scissors

in an overlooked corner

as the snow slowly recedes,

still here

on planet earth

just a little worse for wear.

It's true, things hide in plain sight.

But this particular incident has me utterly bewildered, and I still hold out hope that they'll turn up. Because while I think we would all benefit from reclaiming the kind of wonder we knew as children, I'm still not prepared to believe that everything I count on – a predictable universe ordered by inviolable and universal laws -- is an open question!

I lead a very uneventful life ordered on routine. So every little thing has a chance of becoming a poem! Which suits my poetic sensibility, because I think poems about the small and diurnal are much more appealing than the pretentious ones about big ideas and big emotions, or the political ones that agitate and proclaim.

Those lost scissors just about drove me crazy yesterday. But today, they became a welcome inspiration. How nice to be able to turn my annoyance into something creative!