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Anne Sexton - The Lost Ingredient
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Almost yesterday, those gentle ladies stole 
to their baths in Atlantic Cuty, for the lost 
rites of the first sea of the first salt 
running from a faucet. I have heard they sat 
for hours in briny tubs, patting hotel towels 
sweetly over shivered skin, smelling the stale 
harbor of a lost ocean, praying at last 
for impossible loves, or new skin, or still 
another child. And since this was the style, 
I don`t suppose they knew what they had lost. 

Almost yesterday, pushing West, I lost 
ten Utah driving minutes, stopped to steal 
past postcard vendors, crossed the hot slit 
of macadam to touch the marvelous loosed 
bobbing of The Salt Lake, to honor and assault 
it in its proof, to wash away some slight 
need for Maine`s coast. Later the funny salt 
itched in my pores and stung like bees or sleet. 
I rinsed it off on Reno and hurried to steal 
a better proof at tables where I always lost. 

Today is made of yesterday, each time I steal 
toward rites I do not know, waiting for the lost 
ingredient, as if salt or money or even lust 
would keep us calm and prove us whole at last.
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