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