Something Lost, Something Gained

For a time I lost my poetry
Like old letters on the kitchen table
Caught up in something bigger and stranger and
Probably less beautiful than them.

I wanted to search for it but
Like my house and your act things
Needed to be cleaned up before
Anything worth finding was found.

And I had no reason because
Old habits die hard like smoke
Laced phrases on summer nights or
The way you used to hold me while I cried.

So it laid buried at the bottom
For some hundred-soul-years when it came, like new
Pulled from its casket with dirt marks for nostalgia
And tears in memories.