The Leiry Loop

A ‘lost cause’, they said,

is the search for the wooden cross of Christ

or the place where the Little Prince died.

It is looking for the Fountain of Youth

and talking dragons and swords in stones.

It is proving that Attila the Hun is a

pacifist; it is the attempt to understand

women, rabbits and William Shakespeare.

It is trying to keep the sea in a fishnet

and the snowflake in your sweaty palm.

It is chasing the horizon and trying to

reach the end of the rainbow in a day.

It is seeing an oasis in the desert and

knowing it’s just a mirage for a dead man.

It is trying to put a 30^th in February; it is

a tone-deaf blind child singing in karaoke.

It is the terminally ill, the falling oak,

arriving into an answer to an unknown

question, and the missing pages of a book.

                                            

A ‘lost cause’, I said,

is pretty damn lost in context.