Lost and Found - Elle E. McAfee

poem read by Timothy Arliss OBrien

Lost and Found
Elle E. McAfee

What say you in the end?

In these delicate hours

when the framework of our

collective memory which once

bound us together now

succumbs to the rising tide

of all that lies forgotten

in the cavernous depths of yesterday

When love’s excesses fall away

the pieces rattle around

in that hollowed-out place;

filaments drift skyward in

hazy sunlight – castaways of

this deep pool of memory

streaked and stained with

the sediment of what we’ve left behind

What remains of this fragile landscape

is ferried through the rifts and

scarred shadows, this gentle erosion

by a white-capped river

ever in motion pulled toward the sea

What say you in the end?

When standing at the shoreline

of an ocean of lost and found

time-trapped and broken down

with only the sea smoke to lay claim

to these stranded pieces, these ghosts

of old souls, of old voices

caught in these waves of memory

that wash ashore and dissolve

amid the sunlight and mist of morning-tide.

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Elle E. McAfee is a writer from the Dallas area. She was raised in Arkansas, spent a decade in New York City,

then moved to Texas to start a second career. Now, she's taking her love for reading and writing to a new

space. This is her first submission for publication.