Lost Words

I went to find the words
Wraiths from the past
Blind text
Some turns of phrase
turning through my life like seagulls
living on scraps of crap. Detritus
Some mediocre mouthings in the wind
Flipping in my past
Mutterings
But they’re gone
drifting away
neglected fading in old formats
Unreachable
on unreadable blank scraps of
black plastic
If they are even there
shifting away from me on
currents of my life
of my past
twisting against the stream
Forgotten

I try to catch them
twisting away turning through
water air thought memory
Unknowing
How much flesh will they yield
scraps of shimmer and ghost and pain
Foolish

***

Copyright © 2011 Elizabeth Cutts