Where have you run to so quickly, dear children,
so fast and so frantic that you have flown,
and Mary Janes, the summer flip-flops and rainbow
jellies, Western boots and boxy black Oxfords,
reserved for church and family weddings.
You have left no tracks, dear children, your voices
so high that they drip from the tips of branches,
or are disguised among the shrieks of passing birds.
But it's your songs which we miss the most now,
how you narrated the most mundane of days,
called out the clouds by name, laughed
so hard that we worried over your very breathing.
We have placed them here upon the lawn,
rows and rows of them, awaiting your return.
We have left a path between each for you to walk.
You do not answer, even with your silence.
Children, it's getting darker with each passing minute.
How will you find your way after sunset
and nothing on your feet? What could we have
done to keep you away so long?
