"Finding Sarah and Phillip" (National Poetry Month poem-a-day) Day 22

Written by Bruce A. Pandolfo
4/23/2017

Sarah and Phillip
went for an extended visit with Dad for Fourth of July.
The fireworks weren't all celebratory.
Dad shot off two himself.
Sarah and Phillip's stay was permanent.
They had new rooms, roadside.
Fair amount of acreage.
A tree, a pile of wood
some loose concrete
like incidental headstones.

He couldn't recall what he'd done.
Couldn't recall where he'd done it.
Where he buried he and Terri's babies,
two babes with bullet holes where sweet faces used to be.
He scribbled the police a crude map,
(painfully reminiscent of a child's drawing.)
Careless, crude cartographer of rustic crypts.
He sent himself off on an extended visit of his own
before he could be of much help.
In someways he had done enough.
In others he hadn't.
Terry pleaded with the police, pleaded and pleaded.
But not a one could find her children.
She desperately called upon the public to help her gain some closure.
To bury them with some honor.
To set them somewhere sweet.
To settle her somehow.

In Akron, Ohio the call was heard.
Stephanie Dietrich grabbed her
trusty tank of a dog Ricco and started immediately.
After all, wasn't SHE a citizen? She thought.
She knew the area...she could help, she figured.
It's what any person would do” she knew.


Excavator. Investigator.
Got a little obsessed, Stephanie did.
She researched websites and news stories.
She drove up and down highways for miles.
She dug holes for hours, stippling acres of land fruitlessly.
Took off work (in favor of more pertinent labors).
Referenced maps in some perversion of treasure hunting.
People started to think she owned the properties she scoured.
She and Ricco looked out for one another.
Morbid adventurers. Citizen heroes.

Months and months go by.
Stephanie's attention wavers.
She's never finished anything she started.
Now that she started helping finished people,
she can't let them down.
That's happened enough already.

One day, intuitive Ricco
unleashed as always.
Lays 'neath a tree.
A strangely familiar tree.
Could it be...
So smart,
Stephanie's dog.
Stephanie digs.
One last time.
A small cross.
A plastic bag.
A gasp.
A phone call.
The FBI arrive to unearth
Small siblings bagged like garbage.

Ricco was awarded a bone for finding bones.
Stephanie was given an award that she shrugs off modestly.
Some people are wired that way.
She went back to work.
Terry begins to find closure two years after losing her children.
She calls Stephanie,
The amazing spirit of what we hope people are”
Rightly so.


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