On my television,
they're looking for
another missing person.
Way out in the desert
and in the woods
with dogs and
sharp sticks and
special cameras
which take pictures
at night.
Whole towns are looking.
In ponds and
along roadways,
in drainage ditches
and down in old wells.
They say that
they won't stop
until they find them,
even if they have
become just a pile
of chalky bones.
You can see
the photos of them
on power poles
all across America.
They look familiar,
as if we just
saw them behind us
at the supermarket
or sitting, reading
at the bus stop.
There is one in
my yard right now,
crouching behind
one of the shrubs.
When I asked,
they said they
prefer to be missing.
And who am I
to argue with them?
I was missing once.
There is something
to be said for it.
Daniel Thomas Moran is the author of ten collections of poetry, the most recent of which, “A Shed for Wood” was published by Salmon Poetry in Ireland in 2014. He is the former poet laureate of Suffolk County, New York, the birthplace of Walt Whitman. He has had more than three hundred poems published in some fifteen different countries. He retired as Clinical Assistant Professor from Boston University’s School of Dental Medicine in 2013 where, in 2011, he delivered the Commencement Address. He lives in Webster, New Hampshire with his wife Karen.
