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Lost and Found

My daughter is wailing again about what is not here.
Not her other mama, presently at work,
not her nana who raised her for the first year
not her blue car in the drive (see mama, above).

If she knew that olive trees don't grow here, she'd mourn them too.
Or tse tse flies, or oranges—
she's predisposed.

At a loss while she sobs, I'm reading her a book before nap,
it's called "Lost and Found,"
a boy finds a penguin,
tries to repatriate it to the South Pole,
the penguin stands forlorn on the ice
as the boy rows away in his boat.
My daughter says, Sometimes you leave me at the south-pole and
that makes me sad.

I row through our tears,
vowing to keep her close.
Where have I left her?
Like a politician, I blame the previous administration.
The boy returns for the penguin,
eventually, they find each other and go home.

Alone, in a quiet dawn, I scan the horizon for any truth.
The gap left in the birth mother's wake is a kind of truth
but, so too, is this—
primal loss repels primal loss.
I must re-examine my own southern jaunt.
Left adrift, I too, know despair.
We too, must make our way back north
to that tropic of love.

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