Theory of lost things

Because loneliness and beauty are inseparable, one is often
mistaken for the other. As when it becomes difficult to eat

because the tears won't stop coming though you're hungry
and the food, undoubtedly, delicious: the peas, tomatoes,

pink slice of lamb and small round dollop of white beans.
Beauty and loneliness are there in the girl you remember

seated on a bench beside the river waiting for the boy
who will kiss you as he pushes his ice-cream into your face.

They are the chainsaws scattered like orange poker chips
while the work crew takes their break beneath the last cedar,

huddled and begging its shade. Think of your recurring dream
where the bodies of the newly dead turn to diamonds

spread across the ground like tiny failed planets fallen
from the sky and then try to tell me what I say isn't true.

Copyright © 2009 Keetje Kuipers All rights reserved
from Cider Press Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission