The Curator

I was born a lost thing

You have lost your things so you know what I mean.

I was born in a train car, its wheels creaky and cold

And my mother was small and not very old

My mother was a lost thing, so far from home

A train was one of the places she’d roam

I had no ticket and neither did she

I always figured they let her on free

The dawn was purple beyond the open sliding doors

And the dew on the grass made sparkling floors

The train did stop once and she hopped past the binder

I remained a lost thing in the train car behind her

The train moved again, never meaning to stay

And I sat at the edge and looked onto the day

Did you know the sky does keep

The horizon bounces and the clouds creep

Everything else moves but the sky is the same

The mountains snow is thick up top but at the bottom it wanes

The plains are flat and will be so to the sea

Which is also flat, alive, and glassy

We went by a town and its houses were small

The farm ones were short and the public ones tall

Horses stood unshaken from my train car’s screech

And I always remained just out of their reach

One day I was joined by a young boy with a bag

Like mother he had no ticket, just rags

We traveled together as quiet as can be

And when the train let him, he ran away free

He had not left me alone in the train car again

From his pocket fell out an old fountain pen

Another person came from a car’s other side

And he left a cap with the brim extra wide

The mouse came after and took a reprieve

It became a lost thing too and never did leave

The towns I would visit and the places to see

They all find new things to forget about me

The little train cars that fly away without tracks

And new trains are made with the stuff mine lacks

My train never stopped and even faster it went

Until that one day when the track bent

I am a lost thing, along with the mouse, hat and the pen

And so was the train with all the women and men

Our train still moves on tracks long rotted away

And we watch the world change after each new day

The farm houses got bigger and the public houses got taller

And people lose things from bigger to smaller

They jump on our train and we take them in tow

While our train moves faster to where lost things go

Then someone new hopped onto the train

A lost thing alone in the silver cut rain

the train found a girl with a hole in her chest

And she sat in my car alone with the rest

“Are you lost” I asked and sat at her side

“I wouldn’t say lost, I have something to find”

“Find”? I asked with a gasp and batting eyes

This was the first someone finding came to arise

“I’m looking for my heart, I lost it when dad died

I have been looking for it in this town far and wide”.

I looked among the lost things for her lost heart

I had hearts of all kinds but only broken apart

I shrugged at her sadly

I had felt badly

Because the only lost thing I didn’t have was hers

Only her cries had turned into laughter and purs

It’s paws were small, even smaller than mine

With with fur like snow and whiskers so fine

It stayed on the train the same as all the rest

And it had decided to greet our finding guest

“This kitten’s so sweet” she said with a smile

“May I take it home for a, only for a while”?

“I don’t have the lost thing you are looking for

I’m not even sure if that one is worth less or more”

“I think it will do, even though it’s not a heart

It will help me heal and that is a start”.

In the time she was there the train had gone far

To get her back home she had to summon a car

It was then I realized as she went home with a new friend

That lost things become found things in the end

From then on I help people find

Anything lost in time

Or giving them something less or more

If they hopped into my door

A man finding old things from back then

Went to a museum not donate the hat and the pen

A detective came finding a lost car in the rain

Instead became famous for finding the old train

And it trundled old tracks near and far

But no longer the lost things train, as the Finding Car