Poem for Thursday and Wintry Glenstone

In the Museum of Lost Objects
By Rebecca Lindenberg

What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee; 
What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage.    
                    Ezra Pound

You’ll find labels describing what is gone:
an empress’s bones, a stolen painting
 
of a man in a feathered helmet
holding a flag-draped spear.
 
A vellum gospel, hidden somewhere long ago
forgotten, would have sat on that pedestal;
 
this glass cabinet could have kept the first
salts carried back from the Levant.
 
To help us comprehend the magnitude
of absence, huge rooms
 
lie empty of their wonders—the Colossus,
Babylon’s Hanging Gardens and
 
in this gallery, empty shelves enough to hold
all the scrolls of Alexandria.
 
My love, I’ve petitioned the curator
who has acquired an empty chest
 
representing all the poems you will
now never write. It will be kept with others
 
in the poet’s gallery. Next door,
a vacant room echoes with the spill
 
of jewels buried by a pirate who died
before disclosing their whereabouts.
 
I hope you don’t mind, but I have kept
a few of your pieces
 
for my private collection. I think
you know the ones I mean.

-------- 

My Wednesday was low-key and rather sad, since I learned that a longtime friend had lost a parent and another had a child just get out of surgery after a climbing accident. But I scanned a bunch of more recent family photos I've never seen before, plus some love letters Paul's grandfather wrote his grandmother before and during World War II, and I got to talk to my high school friends at lunchtime, which is always a delight. Plus it was a gorgeous, practically warm day to walk. 

I watched Legends of Tomorrow and The Book of Boba Fett long-distance with Cheryl, the former funny and the latter absolutely awesome, lots of my favorite Star Wars elements, even the music! I absolutely despised the end of The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window, though -- first few episodes had enough humor to get away with the satire label, but then it got preposterous and ugly. Some Glenstone photos from last month: