The Roster [Poem]
15 May
Two hundred sixteen sheets
of printer paper plaster
the public gymnasium’s walls.
Some number command many
other eyes elsewhere in the shelter,
every scrap a make-shift of details
of what you cannot hold:
height weight gender hair length
last place seen last time seen
blurring in the blanks
of the roster checked
and checked and checked again.
Not to find a name is not to find nothing.
In the golden tallgrass on a hillock
outside town, soldiers prod and poke
with long, thin diviners’ rods
as snow freshens pines capped off
with fishers’ nets. They gather
and tag the morning’s remains.
Submitted by: Maureen E. Doallas
© 2011 Maureen E. Doallas