What was it I lost?

What was it I lost?
Was it one or the latest of many?
A feeling, perhaps, or a friend,
then again, a plan, a key,
not essential but meant to be kept.

Between waking and sleeping
the palpable resonance of the familiar—
the sweet companionable rote
of bread and coffee and lists,
of seasons opening on their hinges—
plaited currents of night and day
little by little have undone the levees.

The exact moment is unknowable.
The dry verges where I stand
little by little open to the waters
where the intended, the loved,
the merely desired,
find their traceless exit.
I closed my eyes to their dark dissolving.

Now I am made to feel
not the nature of the loss:
but the heaviness
that hollows the air by its absence,
the green flame that limns the empty forms
when the light goes out.

I have looked everywhere,
in the garden, in the passageway
in the black hole under the stair,
for a long time so certain
I would be surprised
to see it where it has always been,
savoring the relief,
the glad welcome I would utter.

There you are, I would say.
It is still on my tongue, like a prayer.