“What You Thought You Lost” by Wendy Videlock

July 30, 2024Posted by

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.

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Wendy Videlock

WHAT YOU THOUGHT YOU LOST

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
June 2024, Editor’s Choice

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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.”

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