Lost and Found

Max pulls a poem
from his bag and offers
it to me: hand-written
on lined paper
only one coffee stain.

His sandy hair is a bird’s nest
his goatee white, his eyes quick
his smile easy—this boy
I didn’t remember, now middle-aged
and sitting across from me over quiche
and coffee at the Pie Company.

Max is my first Christmas present
the poem, my second.                     

“It was raining,” he said, “and the line of people waiting
to enter the Cluny Museum so long
I walked across the street
to the café.

I thought I might write a poem.”

Every year since 1981, Max has flown to Paris.
Each time, he goes to the Cluny Museum
to see The Lady and the Unicorn:
6 tapestries glowing in a red haze
each with a lady, a unicorn
and a lion.

He stands in the darkened room thinking of a thousand
things, including the small poem
he saw 45 years ago
in East Lansing.

The poem is lost.

He can’t remember the words
but it convinced him
to go to Paris.

I who wrote the poem cannot find it anywhere.

He followed a thread shining in the dark—
all the way to La Dame a la Licorne.

He has followed that thread
back to me, bringing a poem in which he “weaves
his way up the stairs, to the room where time
is frozen and the lady is waiting.”

Now, he places the thread in my hands.
You cannot see it but it holds us

together.