Lost Things

by Jessica Traynor

We are living now
in the era of lost things.

Can you feel
the bee’s wingbeat

as it dodges
into the slipstream

of the ephemeral? No —
you’re cocooned

in screens embroidered
with shifting letters,

that tell any story
you want to hear.

Could you bear
the awareness

of each vanishing;
the last ever swish

of a tiger’s tale,
the cuckoo’s call

fossilized in a clock,
and lost to the morning

the sparrow’s
warlike chatter?

It all sounds just like
the stuff of fairytales;

encode the forest in a story,
close the book.