"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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