---

It was on our normal evening stroll

through the neighbourhood when I saw it,

perched snugly inside a crack in the sidewalk, 

sparkling like the eyes of a cat in a dark alley, 

a dime, that was lost and now found.

Lost and found, a phrase 

that sounds like a Jane Austen novel

with orphans and separated lovers, like

the blue pen-cap in my hand 

and its missing partner, the pen,

like Tupperware covers that longingly

wait for fitting bowls,

the lonely sock in bright rainbow hue

that pine away for a companion,

or the solitary battery from the original

4-pack that sits alone at a table for four, 

while its comrades slowly die

locked inside a gadget or two.

And not to mention the favourite

book that has eloped 

with an unknown borrower,

leaving behind a floral jacket 

of lavender and white.

Lost and found, certainly

sounds like ledger columns

in a book of accounts

where the losses keep adding up:

old memories, lost,

most of the hair, gone,

muscle tone, friends,

so many lives, so much time.

Lost and found, may 

sound like a scale that strives to

balance sorrow with joy,

but fails me now as I hobble 

to the fridge in search of ice,

having stepped on a long-lost piece 

of Lego – green, solid, and lethal,

that has quietly crept from

under a sofa where it was hiding for years, 

to show up at this very moment,

and torment.  

---

Shuvra Das was born and raised in India.  He came to the US as a graduate student in Engineering in 1985.  He has been a Professor of Engineering in Detroit for more than twenty-eight years now.   He writes poetry because of the sense of enjoyment he gets out of playing with words.  Although he has authored five books in Engineering, he has not yet published a poetry collection.  Some of his poems have been published in magazines.  His hobbies include reading, writing, photography, painting, travel and political activism.