NOTHING IS LOST

Flowers open, get their awws, go brown.
A canvas drinks color, gets its hmms, then cracks.
A dish is cooked, gets its slurps, gets passed.
A song is written, gets hummed, gets forgotten.

So what happens to this poem?

The Mona Lisa, you'd say. That one lasts.
She hangs behind glass, getting hmms in every language, though even the wood beneath her face dries and splits a little more each year.
That's a masterpiece — though everyone has a masterpiece, and everyone is hoping theirs is the one thing that doesn't go.

I remember Mona but I can't remember where my keys are.
The keys are still somewhere.
But are they there if I can't remember them?

So what happens to this poem?
Who cares about this poem.
Another woman indulging herself the way dead poets did.
I typed it. You're reading it
off a screen that will one day go dark.

You won't remember this poem.
But I'll remember the love in it for a while,
until I go, and the memory goes too.

Some guy called Newton figured out
that energy can't be made or unmade,
it just turns into something else.

So maybe the love I put in here
turns into something else when I'm done.
Maybe a flower.
Which opens.
Then goes brown.

Then goes.