Like dust, like snow, lost people drift away
from family farms, firm, tribe, geographic
circle of predictable marriages, births,
murders and funerals. Usually in late teens,
it dawns that they must exit but not why
because home is all they’ve known as
they imagine another life outside, without.
No one has suggested type-lost constitutes
a sub-species but evolution is incrimental
and in this instance, primarily mental.
Lostees are far from overrunning the earth
at this point but their numbers are increasing
so the term ‘rogue’ has been mooted.
Of course, the lost end up somewhere,
put down shallow roots and briefly try to
fit in while looking interested in local sports.
Just as sexual as their counterparts; however,
a whiff of them can worry/excite imaginations
of those who belong to places, believe places
and people belong to them. Call it fascination
with the ‘other’ or competition for breeding stock.
Wandering, wondering lost folk and ‘belongers’
often mate and produce offspring that then
face the challenges of those wayward genes.
Female horse/male donkey might equal mule.
There are many worse possibilities.
No law against it but it’s a stony field
that breaks the odd plough. Partners of lost
things often live with niggling insecurity.
The lost eat ice cream, curse like nurses,
drive jeeps, exercise in parks, appear
much like their standard-issue neighbours.
Some swim. It’s impossible to pick them
out of a police line-up or group photo.
They will claim to be of somewhere but
they are really just from there and their birth-
place means no more to them than where
they had a holiday. Permanent orphans
who generally would have it no other way.
Not a historically recent phenomenon,
lost humans. They pay tax, go to emergency
departments when they break bones.
They aren’t immortal but tend toward amoral,
although some have joined religions or clubs
until that urge to get lost sets in and they
move on. Lost people are no wiser than
the rest. A few claimed to have happened
upon a forever habitat but this condition
is temporary, a delusion perhaps born
of fatigue. They only truly belong to and
ultimately long for their own lostness so
they blunder on, saying insensitive things
without regard for local taboos or in local
vernacular. They favour funny hats,
can only fake devotion to a local team.
They have no idea how uncomfortable
they make those who know how every-
thing must be done lest the earth open
and swallow its screaming children.
The lostish know the world will end but
see themselves elsewhere when that
occurs, like there’s always another option.
Lost people don’t necessarily gravitate
towards other lost people at barbeques
but wouldn’t follow up for long anyhow
because connections have no lasting appeal.
They have an riveting story or two, having
been so lost, and relost – lost being their
natural state. Bound to have at least one
crazy adventure worth telling. Some write
memoirs that they don’t bother to publish
because their truth gets lost and reads
more like hearsay than history. Losters –
there will be a latin name in time – aren’t
a community so no anthropologist has
ever established a home amongst them.
Like them, all studies are on-going
so it is not clear how they fit
into Nature as a whole.

---

Allan Lake is a migrant poet from Allover, Canada who now lives in Allover, Australia. Coincidence. His latest chapbook of poems, entitled ‘My Photos of Sicily’, was published by Ginninderra Press. It contains no photos, only poems.