POEM FROM
COUNTING THE WAVES

Keys 

All day I’ve made of my ordered house chaos.
My keys remain lost as though that’s become
their business. A maddening mystery.
“Incomprehensible,” I’ve shouted,
but that is stretching it. And in my angst,
so, too, the notion that these particular keys
represent the whole of my life’s scatterings.
Our dog, oblivious and shameless, tongues
his privates. A wren fidgets from branch to branch.
For them, what happens is what happens,
if that. For me, what will happen
does not exist yet. Meaning
my keys, as if by magic, might still show up,
or that I’ll go to a certain pocket or shelf
as if divinely directed.
Meaning lost not thrown away
like certain opportunities. Meaning lost not taken
as stroke or cancer claim words or breasts.
Who would want the life of dog or wren,
days undifferentiated by yesterday or tomorrow?
No before-the-keys, no after-I-find-them.
Those places in between here and there,
between lost and gone.