Losing Things

Things get lost.
Wonderful things.
Beautiful things.
The only copy
of the only poem
written in a man’s life.
One day it was gone.
When he needed the words
he’d written.
When for a moment
nothing was dull or mediocre in his life.
He wanted to give it a mate,
something besides himself, that
his flash of brilliance needed,
to justify the emptiness in his heart.
Now it was gone.
And he laid his head on the table
and wept for a poem
he could not even remember.