I know the work is at least 391 pages long. Judging by page 391 it is much, much longer. I know it has a preface, I have page xiv. I know it is divided into chapters, I can see their titles: Thunderstorm, Tokyo at Night, Broken Chair, and others that appear to be the names of characters. I do not have any consecutive pages. One name has come up twice, but so common it could mean two people. The writing is divergent, a different voice to every page, topics that leap from paragraph to paragraph: the ink of an octopus, a brother and sister racing cars, the stairwell of a downtown mall, the conversation a young woman overhears. I do not know if the pages are meant to be read consecutively or in the order that I am finding them.

Maybe I am imagining this, in fact I must be, in fact it fails more often than it succeeds, but tell me, do you work hints into each page, are they a treasure hunt? Page 72 described a pavilion in a park. I spent an afternoon searching parks and found page 219 in the second one I searched. But then, I was so sure Sunken Ship meant the naval memorial, and though I worked my fingernails into every crack of the thing, the warden thought I was crazy and there was nothing there.

No, I must be imagining it. I can’t be the only one finding these pages. I can’t be the only one they are meant for. I wonder how many people are gathering up these broken pieces of you. I wonder if we have more in common with each other than we do with you.

How have you done with loving what made sense, as compared with loving what did not?

I’m told there is a variation of Rochambeau that includes rock, paper, scissors, and hundreds of other objects. The number of rules to remember must be impossible.

What is a game you’d rather make up as you go along than play?

The idea behind his Found Poetry Project is to see what happens when you look for those accidents. Maybe a note on your power bill sounds like a haiku, or a message your drunk friend left sounds like free association. See what happens when you write them out like poems!

I found something and emailed it in. It’s called Public Retraction, and the original source should still come up if you google it.

I’ll leave you with a couple of links:

• http://www.foundpoetry.org/blog/2009/03/public-retraction/ to the poem I found and formatted.
• http://www.foundpoetry.org/blog/rules/ to the rules for the Found Poetry Project.

I enjoyed doing this. It didn’t take effort or inspiration or angst. It made me notice how odd and beautiful and seductive the ordinary language around me is, things I might never have thought about twice. The project is up and running, and absolutely anyone is allowed to try. I’d love to hear about the poems you find. If you like, then leave them as comments or leave links to them.

I want to give you something. This seems important. A mint canister is lying in the gutter. The cover image is of a girl with a rabbit and it looks too old, like a ghost from 1932 has dropped it. I pick it up and scrub it with rainwater and a finger. I pop its dents back out, but anyone can see where it was dented. Still, it opens and closes well. Now it just needs something to keep inside. I pick up a curl of hopeful red plastic to deposit.

You brush away a lock of wet hair that has stuck to your cheek. You say thank-you and seem to mean it. The drops are heavy. When I am around the corner, I close my eyes and lift my face into the rain. My heart is pounding.

The next time I see you, I offer you a chain of paperclips. When it is sunny I will gather twigs and wrap them in twine. But it has been raining for weeks. I am sure you are standing in it today, you always are. So before I find you, I gather pennies from the sidewalk. I am sure no one would throw them away if they weren’t denominated to be worth so little. The shiniest I find was minted in nineteen eighty-five. I give it to you with the promise it will reflect a disk of light onto your cheek once the rain has cleared.