Shopping Cart
    items

      ←

      July 30, 2024What You Thought You LostWendy Videlock

      Terry's Keys by Kim Beckham, photograph of keys hanging on a fence at a beach

      Image: “Terry’s Keys” by Kim Beckham. “What You Thought You Lost” was written by Wendy Videlock for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2024, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

      What you thought you lost along the way
      hangs in the air like a prayer
       
      May you find your way home
      may the doors swing open wide
                  from the out and the in
       
                    side
       
      under a wide open sky
      May you lose
                  may you find,
      may you know
                    in the core
      of your weathered soul your old
       
      and your new sign
       
      May every stranger on the path
      become the one who
                              stopped
       
      to hang something you thought
      you lost in the air
                    by a thread like an ancient
      pagan prayer
                  like some kind of
      elder
                warm-eyed
       
      guardian was standing there.

      from Ekphrastic Challenge

      Comment from the series editor, Megan O'Reilly

      “‘What You Thought You Lost’ begins with comparing what was lost to a prayer–an apt simile, given that this poem feels like a prayer, with its reverent language, melodic sound, and spiritual references. What a transcendent connection, too, the poet draws between the concrete image of keys hanging on a beach fence and the abstract concept of something lost (we don’t know what, but somehow we have a sense of it) hanging in the air ‘by a thread like an ancient/pagan prayer.’ There’s already an intangible quality to artist Kim Beckham’s beach scene, a sense of possibility, but the metaphysical tone of the poem adds greater complexity to the photo. One of the things I love most about the ekphrastic challenge is how differently I can see a piece of art after I read a poem about it, and ‘What You Thought You Lost’ made me look at this image in a way I never could have without it.”

      →

      Related