The Definition of Lost

30 Poems in 30 Days: Day 16
Write a definition poem. A definition poem takes a word or a concept and attempts to define it, 
provide perspective, redefine it, or create a definitive example of it.

It’s this three-year-old girl
face screwed up
eyes and nose streaming,
turning in frantic circles
looking and looking and looking
for one familiar point
in the swirl of large legs and bodies
noisy faces thrusting, asking,
“Where’s your Mummy?” – as if
that wasn’t the whole problem –
in the strange new landscape
of the picnic ground.

It must have been only a moment,
then she’d have reappeared.
A little woman, as I discovered
when I was much older,
she’d been hidden, perhaps,
by the crowd. Maybe
I let go her hand
and so we were separated
briefly, but long enough.

I always thought my ridiculous
fear of losing my way
in unfamiliar places
came from that time the conductor
put me off the tram when I was seven
for tendering the wrong fare.
I cried and wailed then too,
feeling not only small
but somehow dirty,
until kind strangers took me home –
at least I was well taught
to remember my address.

But now, in old age, exploring
that distress, that panic,
that wretchedness,
I find the three-year-old,
her terrified abandonment
my defining moment
of being lost.