For the Recovery of Lost Things
Traditional, to St. Anthony of Padua
St. Anthony, St. Anthony, please come round; something is lost and cannot be found.
Thou who once recovered a stolen book and a hundred smaller things besides, turn thy kind attention to these keys, this phone, this single shoe, this thing I held not an hour ago and cannot for my life now place. Guide my hand and my hurried eye to where it patiently waits, and settle my anxious heart in the meantime. Amen.
The rhyming couplet is a genuine folk invocation of long standing; the second paragraph was written for this collection.
