When they found the girl,
blue faced in the green creek,
no one knew her name,
but the water owned her
hair and ran like tears
on her cerulean cheeks
as they pulled her
body to the bank.
Three weeks on and no one
owns her still, as if
lost means lost for good
and not misplaced
the way you lose your keys
or lose your way
for a month or year
and come home sad or gray.
You know someone’s lying,
maybe her, blue face
and yellow hair, lips
drawn to ask a question
before she changed her mind.
We’re all lying here
believing no one knows us,
believing we’re not dying every day
like this water chasing stars
downriver, stones tumbling
into each others’ space
and abandoned at the dam.
Her lost way, the path
washed out for worry
and the silt erasing traces
like names scratched into sand.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 14, Issue 2.
By day, Grant Clauser works as a home technology writer. his poems have appeared in The Literary Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Cortland Review, Wisconsin Review, Blueline and others. In 2010 he was named the Montgomery County Poet Laureate by Robert Bly. His book The Trouble with Rivers (Foothills Publishing) was published in 2012.
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