things have been lost

things have been lost since

before things worth having existed,

a steady progression of the taken and mislaid

by geometric increment increased, the vast

lost-listed, the virtually

unmade,

until the ratio of them to us is many many over one,

until it's us, now, the glum unsearched-for missing

while the

so-called Lost are safely amassed at Lost's home,
and cosseted, in yearned-for-world of

wallets, keys, old friends, gold pens
and those ghost-gifted poems we awoke and

failed to scribble down, now mouthed

by lovers gone and children flushed or

drowned