Found and claimed

Walking, I keep my eyes peeled for random debris, vigilant for meaning, ready to impart (or receive) significance into (or from) found objects-- the magic and wonder of toy parts, playing cards, wordy scraps of paper, labels, medallions, bits of plastic, broken tools, colorful ropes. Pray tell, what they tell?

Once I found a red foam clown's nose in the grass near the rushing waters of  Euclid Creek, after arriving there in a lousy mood. Hard to stay pissy in the face of red foam.

So I scan with talismanic fever, interpreting ground debris, forgotten fragments.  My claimed meaning as true as anything else, sincere if not on target. Weirdly appropriate items inappropriately found, happens everywhere I live.

Recently a little metal tag from a Jimmy Choo shoe, a brand I referenced in a poem ("wobbling in her Jimmy Choo shoes...").

Today was a doozy. Feeling anxious, jangles wrangling in my head, peeved. Park truck, open door, look down. A purple-swirled super ball in the grass. Like the ones you get from the turn the quarter, get-the- cheap-stuff machines at the grocery store. Always lose them, but my son Noah says they almost always show up again. You mean like outside your car as a reminder that folly trumps your tiresome seriousness and self-pity?

I bounce my new purple super ball, wondering what else it means.