How often,
when searching for something lost
we find another item we
were looking for earlier.
Lost chattels turn up eventually,
like bad pennies;
but not the disappeared.
They never return.
So where can they be?
Are they dead?
If so, why do they not tells us,
Or show us the bodies?
Lie to us about how they died?
Perhaps they let them live;
pushed them out of their camps,
disorientated, witless amnesiacs
left to wander alien streets.
Have I passed them by in the shopping mall?
Tossed them a handful of coins
to palliate my own guilt?

I hear my mother's insistent voice.
'They are where you left them!'�
But the disappeared are not where I left them.
I've searched all the usual places;
down the sides of sofas;
under half-empty beds;
behind dressers on which
your pictures still stand.
No trace. Nothing.
Except memories. Photographs.
Whispers at night in my dreams.
You loom up large at me
but your face has no features.
Only a mouth that opens
and shuts in a soundless scream.

Perhaps you're in limbo,
waiting to be found,
condemned like unbaptised
souls to wander unseen
for all eternity.
Then I may never find you.
Never release you from your torment,
nor be released from mine.

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