Looking for Virginia Dare

Of course, you would have sung

from the boat offshore as the others did,

songs she’d surely recognize—

English tunes, a minor key. And like them,

you’d search the unfamiliar fields,

grasses gray and mauve and brown,

waiting for another season to reclaim

their colors. Bits of remembered conversation

spirited away. Was she robbed of alphabet?

She does not call out her name.

The world’s a dangerous place for a child—

so write the lost daughter as the forest.

Write her as all that was lost within it.

Call her gone. Or, perhaps—

call her not yet found—

Yes, it’s a perilous world—

but doesn’t every story deserve its turn?

Can’t you see her now, come

unbidden from behind the trees?

Noisy birds unsettle the branches,

stirred by shadows, the half-shadows

imagination brings. Her face

lit by all that is lovely, strange.

So close. Thick scent of her hair.

You’d insisted she was missing—

now, ask for her forgiveness.

And reach for the shy hand

of the girl who might yet return—

who hadn’t meant to be away so long.

Because she is waiting there, she comes

in a dream so startling you see

it is not a dream at all, your own

life decided by these hills, this river,

these trees. And because she is still

there, you have reason to believe

you, too, might witness it: the daughter—

nowhere, somewhere. And always new.