So I wake,
breath pleading like a hooked bass.
I dreamed I'd lost my daughter
and now wrapped in a net of dread
I stir the worry
that comes only in the dark,
and I think about the family
whose daughter disappeared last fall.
They can't find her, guess she is dead,
hope she has amnesia, imagine she is
somewhere in another city
or some other refuge more comforting
than their worst worry.
And this is how loss becomes solace.
Maybe the girl forgot herself, became
a waitress, a bus driver or a fisherman.
Some say God is a fisherman
and we are his catch, a school of worship
in his clotted throat. Maybe
this is more comforting than the other;
someone taking us deep
into that green and luminous cave,
someone pulling us inside out,
raw core of Pisces pinned to a plank.
Maybe the girl is really not lost.
Maybe she went willingly,
thinking she was saved.
-- Karla Huston