Carried place to place,
holder of thoughts and feelings,
inked remembrances, jottings,
lines of verse, favorite passages...
It was blue-covered,
spiral-bound, hand-held, pocket-size,
faded, worn and torn from
quick pulls and tugs
during its travels
How many notebooks over the years?
A dozen: odd shapes, sizes, colors,
with dashed entries on vivid dreams,
recorded pauses, stops, and flights;
makeshift writing moments
local and distant
Returned from a trip,
discovered missing:
a long-held jotting crutch;
now likely a lost-and-found hotel left-behind;
different from sex-soiled sheets,
the odd shirt on the floor,
or forgotten shoe under the bed
Fretted for days, called the hotel,
looked everywhere!
The reality of ‘gone’ sunk in;
and then the mourning of the loss.
The memory of this one is vivid;
open-window cover,
post-it name on the back,
100 or so pages of quotes, ideas,
dreams captured, and drafts
of poetic possibility.
I say goodbye and thank you
for having carried words and lines
of special meaning.
Will I ever re-capture them as intended?
Thought collector, you are off!
Solo to places unknown
perhaps begun with a quick look-at
by the hotel’s room-cleaner,
tossed into a bin,
dumped into a dumpster,
words and thoughts
ashes to the wind.
