Clair de lune
The mountains finally shed
a perfect moon. Two in the morning.
We’ve had the black for tracing
brushy hill and frozen bog,
culvert, ditch and trestle,
any place a child could be.
Not would or should,
but by the chance of souls and bodies
could be.
She was too fast asleep,
when they found her in her bed,
to answer.
Now the moon tweaks
the corner of my eye, the sheets,
drifts its images of woods,
small dark rooms under ice.
I search and search
every black hollow that becomes a child,
while she
slips deeper to sleep.
~ Taylor Graham
from Casualties: search-and-rescue poems (Coal City Review #9, 1995)