by Patricia M. Phillips-Batoma
For the Guthrie family
In the Sonoran desert
a mother is missing
and the world wonders
who could do this.
Her children on TV
try to break through.
The star sibling,
with the made-for-TV smile,
brighter than any screen,
vast as a continent,
breaks down. She sniffles.
Her mouth twists
in her small mortal face
where crisscrossed lines
read like a map
of all Earth’s sorrows.
So many know this disaster.
They sit on the same couch
as these three siblings,
with family near
and ordinary days out of reach.
We are not built to endure
the snatching away of goodness and light,
of normal human people.
Author's note: The lines in italics echo the first video put out by Savannah Guthrie and her two siblings.
Patricia Phillips-Batoma is a writer and teacher who lives in Illinois. She has published poems in Skylight 47, An Capall Dorcha, The New Verse News, Off Course, Plants and Poetry and Spilling Cocoa over Martin Amis.
