June 21

today my young son disappeared
for just a few moments, at the supermarket
and now I'm afraid to go to sleep.


it's not that he'll be out of sight;
we're safe here, at home.


but
that's twice in the past two weeks --
i look up from a magazine, a picnic table
and the light has changed

the bright sun hides the scalpel's edge
among the ordinary objects,
an exacto blade that neatly carves the outline
of a truth, and lifts it from my page,
leaving a hole in the day.

this time it was my boy, gone utterly
without a sound


a week ago, I saw a parkland bloodlessly
eviscerated
by the appearance of a wounded deer.
it lurched, its broken body
heaving, leaping on snapped legs
across the baseball field where children ran
laughing --

if i had not been surrounded then
by other people, kids,
I would have thought myself insane,
so clean the slice that split
the breathing life, revealing terror's mad despair.

the deer had been hit by a car.

out in the parking lot I found my child,
waiting,

knowing we would come, but just then
looking not quite certain --
a missing piece, a small but priceless truth -
my very breath, my soul
seen from a horrible distance


across a plane


of vast indifference


on an otherwise lovely summer day.