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Thursday 6 October 2011

Missing Child

Something of the backstory to this is here

The children - if it was the children-
have restored the chalk world washed out by the rain.
Halfway across the square the squares have names.
Here is one tagged "HOME". The games
are not familiar to me
and change repeatedly. I think they are created
on the hoof. Two days ago, two doors from me,
a small boy disappeared from here, this square within a square.
Propped up nearby, a tattered Teddy Bear.
His innards hanging out, he squats
beside a faded rose. Are these
just two abandoned tokens of the game that they had played?
Have they no deeper meaning than dead zebras or the river,
lemon squeezer, jungle track or shark-infested sea?
Or are they something darker, a thing that should not be,
the trappings of a dread? anticipating grief?
I shiver at the sight - or maybe at the thought;
the thought that others had the thought
of how it might have been. It could be both:
the tributes were incorporated as they played,
became part of the apparatus of the game. Five hours
or thereabouts, his whereabouts remained unknown,
policemen calling door to door. The dogs
seemed out of touch - not knowing, I suppose,
how rapidly the scene can change, the game move on,
the children rearrange the landscape of the square.

Some dickhead, numskull, dolt invited them - the little boy
and friend - to his house to play their games, and they
had wandered off with him to see this somewhere new,
the patch of greener grass three streets or so away.

Now for the moment, men are laying water mains,
machines are in possession of the square.

10 comments:

kaykuala said...

Somewhat like 'Jumanji' a happening that involved the neighbourhood with lots of strange episodes. In this case more sadness is felt as a child is missing!

Hank

sunny said...

an excellent.you did a great job

David Cranmer said...

All this and you're at BEAT to a PULP as well. (shameless plug :)

Carl said...

this is mysterious and twisty and a bit un-nerving. Thanks Dave another winner.

jabblog said...

Shades of darkness in this one. I love the rhythm of your poems and the internal rhymes - I often have to go back to check that I really did hear what I read.

sunny said...

thanks Mr Dave for your response on "apples were not that sexy"

Windsmoke. said...

A very dark and mysterious episode of a child gone missing which every parent fears :-).

Mary said...

Dark and laced with truth, Dave.

Dave King said...

kaykuala
Yes, but panic more than sadness, for then, thank goodness, the child turned up unharmed.

Much thanks sunny.

David
Feels like Christmas! Thanks for everything.

Carl
Scary. No one knew how it would turn out.

jabblog
Yes, it began to feel very dark at one point. Interesting comment. I sometimes have to do that, too - not sure what that shows!

sunny
Only too pleased.

Windsmoke
Yes, absolutely. Every parent's nightmare, to coin a phrase.

Mary
Can't disagree with that. Thanks as always.

Jenny Woolf said...

I thought it must be a real story. I'm glad the child was unharmed. I find the idea so upsetting that I am usually unable to appreciate the literary merits or otherwise of anything about this kind of subject.