What was Lost

You’ve lost countless socks,

the singles in a basket

that is now filled to the brim

in the hopes of one-day reuniting the pair.   

You lost a library book, one volume

In a Jacque Costeau series  

your parents had to pay

a small fortune to replace. 

You lost that beautiful line drawing of your mother.

She sat self-consciously still for an age.

When you were finished

and showed it to her, she cried.

You lost the diamond from your engagement ring

in a supermarket parking lot in the rain.

You heard it ping off the ground

as you dug for the keys in your purse.

As to the book, your sister threw it

into a crawl space in the attic,

because she was mad at you

and hoped it would get you in trouble,

which it did.

As to the drawing, your mother

secretly removed it from your sketch book.

She had it framed for you, as a surprise,

but when she picked it up from the framer,

she decided she wanted to keep it

at her cubicle at work.

She couldn’t bring herself to tell you.

As to the diamond, your husband

purchased the ring from

a discount jeweler.

The setting was not sound

and the somewhat yellow diamond

fell to the asphalt where it was

lost in the splashing droplets of rain.

When the parking lot dried,

a man stepped on it

and felt something unusual

through the thin sole

of his three thousand dollar

Italian leather loafers.

He was annoyed to discover

that your precious stone

had dimpled the sole.

He picked it up,

put it in his pocket,

and promptly forgot about it.

It went into the laundry,

but his long suffering

and underpaid Venezuelan maid

did not discover it.

Instead, it came out

in the washing machine

and became lodged

in the drain pump,

forever rattling around in there.

As to the socks you ask,

it is a question of astro-physics.

Mere words cannot explain it

and if I presented the formulas

to you, you would not understand them.