Category Archives: missing person

Welcome Home, Antarctic Explorers!

Posted on by
Reply

I was there when you packed your bags, when you got the passport pictures, (the garrulous postal employee who took them was a highlight!). I was there for all the worry–the mama worry–and there for the day when we drove to the airport all together

To see you off to

Great Adventure!

Despite all my trepidations, I was excited for all of you. I thought this will be cool and said take lots of pictures!

I went in with my eyes wide open

Too many emails back and forth with grownups

getting paid a lot to take you there

Not Mothers Teresas at all

But I didn’t expect this

The lonely road home

The uphill battle just to get you back home

You are home now, darlings

And never let anyone tell you

You are worth anything less than the whole world entire

I would tell you

If I could stand in every airport in the world

Homemade Sign held high and goofily askew

Letters spelt out–

💜WELCOME HOME, ANTARCTIC EXPLORERS!!💙

You mean the world to me

The Feast of Thorns

Posted on by
Reply

Long before our terrible story your birthday was already

the feast of Servites pruning winter roses. I cling to that now, all the other days this day could be:

Obstinate mountains lumber into obeisant seas

Lame men whole, blind men see

Dead men rise and shake off their shroudy bindings

impossible things all around ya

If only you will

See

Planting Daisies

Posted on by
Reply

I pull down the old book, look for recipes for cultivating children, like the time she sewed the earth with dragon’s teeth and made them into men…

I don’t want men

I want daisies

Dozens and dozens, hundreds and hundreds, legions and legions, fields upon fields

Filled with Bellis perennis–beauties everlasting

Because only God can

Make lasting

Children out of words

And wildflowers

Flight 752

Posted on by
Reply

They boarded the plane. Put their bags in overhead compartments. Scanned the list of drinks and snacks on what they thought would be a long flight. Buckled in the children. Watched the international pantomime for safety on an airplane. Assured flight attendants they were old enough for exit seats.

None of us are

Ready for the impact

The percussion, the fire, the fall

As though the story we had been always told about Icarus was a slanderous lie

He did not fly too close to the sun at all

No warning, no premonition, no string long enough to thread them free of

The labyrinth, the

Friendly fire