For the Missing Children

Who took the missing children?

Who took them without us seeing?

Who dared to take the little children?

Who left us alone with our loss?

Some of the little children of the world,

some of our children have gone,

like wind flowers on a finger,

they are blown away.

Pray for the parents

Pray for the uncles and aunts

Pray for the brothers and sisters

Pray for us all.

Follow the parents as the billboards rise

Follow the photographers as shutters click

Follow the abductor as he ducks and dives

Follow the celebrities who famously plea

Follow us the pitying voyeurs

Follow the shadows as they grow longer.

There, but for the grace of God, we weep.

A gash, a festering wound, an open burn;

no Mickey Mouse plaster, no kind nurse, no TV doctor,

no virtual lost, no verisimilitude of missing, no TV version of vanishing,

just the bald, unadulterated, horrible truth:

one of us did it.

Who took the missing children?

Who took them without us seeing?

Who dared to take the little children?

Who left us alone with our loss?