I used to think everything was part of a larger conversation
       

but maybe there's only the boats
        susurrating to the buoys + shore. Look:
if you see boats in every direction
        you're either from where I know, a place
which kisses some lake too much
        to call anything other than great, or you're
hollow and hankering to be filled
        in. Along the bike path mornings after
storm the blown branches betray
        how thin the myth of connectivity re
mains despite facebookery + www.
        whatever.com yr even now telling yrself
u won't waste such hours browsing.
        Tomorrow. We all want to be filled in, all
hope we're the choicest blank form
        yet devised. Let's find fire + stand honest
before it: at the Chinese diner where yes
        terday I ate lunch there waited by the door
a box marked Lost and Founded, in it
        the usual, hats counter-toply abandoned,
shirts left ghosting chair backs as
        owners bolted. Who knows why boats
or half-empty boxes in doorways
        draw note: a woman I once knew as well
as weather cried weeks because she
        was sorrowed by the lack of a thing the size
of a bean. Nothing's the same size
        as how we carry it deeper in, beneath what's
been lost and/or founded: I used
        to think I knew what drinks to order all
my friends, what stories to tell to tug
        them from the murk we all occasionally sink
into, lately all I know is salt, how sweat
        can find a reservoir in any elbow, how tears
end wherever they've spent their viscosity.
        Let's build satisfied tongues with whatever's
been left here + let's say what we can.

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Copyright © 2013 Weston Cutter All rights reserved
from The Literary Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission