Gray Gone Missing

& though a needle drops among the stacks
few are never found, but that absence stirs
a long speculation, their speculation breeds
the undying string of theories: someone
drinks from his umbrellas along the beach,
the face beyond a crowded street & another
lives simply among the doorless pueblos.
These stories populate a mountain village
just beyond a cemetery rumored on the map.
How difficult to vanish than a daily event
(the cancer, accident, feet swept overboard).
A radio cracks somewhere in the morning,
the heavy rains yet another form of snow.
It takes a simple math when the depressed
go absent, though none wish the body found
where other cars are empty, casings, a floor
or vacant in a tree, snagged along the shore.
Their jackets are a sodden black that's hung
across the shoulders, the night as a thread
toward longevity, those unspoken things
(a secret knock, light behind a narrow slot)
to bring the living closer to taking pleasure.

Copyright © 2005 Michael Robins All rights reserved
from Redactions
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission