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.