We look everywhere, disconcerted,
Finally we stop and search our minds,
We trace back our steps into our steps
But the thing eludes us, like an essence,
And its lostness surrounds us like night.

To be found, it must acquiesce to light,
To accident, proximity, to perfect recall.
A St. Anthony need come round
When something lost must be found
In its place outside of time and space.

To be found requires a state of grace,
The thing must guide us back
To the lost kingdom in plain sight.
The ground of being must be misplaced
For us to save happiness from ourselves.

People go to the market to buy words
But don’t have the words
To buy the right words; instead, they bring home
Words that confuse them more.
Not having words makes them suffer
From suffering without words,
And not having words, they repeat
The ones they know so that those words
Come to mean everything and nothing
And are like existential bludgeons
For their maddening incomprehension.
It’s soul-eroding, wordless being.
It’s pathologic to have too few words.
It should be a medical directive
Under the auspices of mental health
If it’s not already global aphasia.
How can you not have words
And the world be made of language?

My father wanted extra time
But the sun rolled over the line.

The referee blew her whistle
Like winter through a thistle.

The ball bounced off the post
Like the spirit from the host.

The penalty was missed
Like a vision in the mist.

In extra time my father thought
Time’s flight itself is caught,

But like a shooting star
Extra time was naught.