M., Age Eight

Published in the Asheville Poetry Review

When in the closing light of afternoon

we realize the daughter has not come home,

we post her brother sentinel and begin

the slow reconnaissance of streets:

Montana Drive. Each muttering inward the repertoire

of waiting evils, things that simply happen

when a body steps absently out

of a delicate crescent of safety.

We are used to this, the walk seeming

not too unlike a stroll, the cadence seeming

that of the Sunday drive we always meant to take,

were it not for the earnest scrutiny

of sidewalks, soccer field, boxwood. Kenilworth.

Alert for the sudden appearance

of her book bag, sweatshirt, scarf: clues,

like bread crumbs, she may have shed.

Buckingham. Leaves fall down around us, halos

too intent on descension to pause.

We have in the final vestiges of sunlight

idle, anxious, grave, whimsical questions.

We have questions broad-shouldered

as the wind that pushes against the house

nights, hollering Ya wanna fight, ya wanna?

We’re tired now, and we decline.

If there is one thing we want more than answers,

it is sleep, her return, and the leaves

to arrest themselves inexplicably in the air

above our heads, just a moment, just to see

through the undoubted descent, the seasonal bully,

the absence of the youngest child

and her brother still poised at attention

under the darkening sky, his spine unusually straight.