Forty Pages

Forty pages are missing in a poetry book.
Somebody liked the poems, I guess,
and took them out and sent the rest back
to wander on the market of used books.
Now I only think about the lost pages.
What was in there?
What words and feelings
rebellious thoughts, complains or regrets,
revelations, a breath of elated spirit?
And where are they? In a dusty draw
or one of them folded into a boat float
down the stream of rain water
next to the squeaking and jumping pair
of new boots?

And what happens next?
After the short ride will it stick
between branches and plastic cups
or simply smashed to the sidewalk
will it lie like a spineless blob
oozing the lines of poems?

I wonder why forty?
Russians believe it is a number of days
that souls of deceased walk among living.
What if the poems were stolen by them?
The ghost would slowly read one a day
time to time lifting up the gaze,
remembering past and anticipating
next step into unknown.

I wish someone
would steal my poems like that.