Where the Lost Things Go

by Leonore Hildebrandt

Her child is resting, tucked against her back

as she walks the great forest.

It is raining––their umbrella thrums a fitful rhythm,

trees rise to a monumental darkness.

A path amounts to more than cairns and sticks,

it is undeniable, like the mottled feathers

they find scattered on the gravel.

The eyes adjust to possibilities,

criss-crossing tales of malady and comfort.

She talks to the child of hunger, of dwellings underground.

A soggy doll someone left behind

stares into the ancient rain.

They return to their home, unharmed. The child

understands that puppets, too, have sorrows.

* * * * *

"Where the Lost Things Go" was first published in Adanna 6, Fall 2016.

Leonore Hildebrandt is the author of The Work at Hand and The Next Unknown. She has published poems and translations in the Cafe Review, Cerise Press, the Cimarron Review, Denver Quarterly, Drunken Boat, The Fiddlehead, Poetry Daily, and Poetry Salzburg Review, among other journals. A native of Germany, Hildebrandt lives “off the grid” in Harrington, Maine. She teaches writing at the University of Maine and serves on the editorial board of the Beloit Poetry Journal.