The Search Party

I wondered if the others felt as heroic as safe: my unmangled family slept while I slid uncertain feet ahead behind my flashlight’s beam.

Stones, thick roots as twisted as a ruined body, what did I fear?

I hoped my batteries had eight more lives than the lost child.

I feared I’d find something.

Reader, by now you must be sure you know just where we are, deep in symbolic woods.

Irony, self-accusation, someone else’s suffering.

The search is that of art.

You’re wrong, though it’s an intelligent mistake.

There was a real lost child.

I don’t want to swaddle it in metaphor.

I’m just a journalist who can’t believe in objectivity.

I’m in these poems because I’m in my life.

But I digress.

A man four volunteers to the left of me made the discovery.

We circled in like waves returning to the parent shock.

You’ve read this far, you might as well have been there too.

Your eyes accuse me of false chase.

Come off it, you’re the one who thought it wouldn’t matter what we found.

Though we came with lights and tongues thick in our heads, the issue was a human life.

The child was still alive.

Admit you’re glad.