A year after the tsunami,
a fifty-year-old son
digs with his hands
through the mud
for his mother.
Maybe her shoes?
A familiar pattern from her dress?
Everyone digs for someone
but nobody finds
who they’re looking for—
Outside the town hall, a lost
& found for the dead: shopping
baskets filled with photo albums
& a wall lined with children’s red
backpacks, still full.
–
Meg Eden’s work is published or forthcoming in magazines including Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, Crab Orchard Review, RHINO, and CV2. She teaches creative writing at Anne Arundel Community College. She is the author of five poetry chapbooks, the novel Post-High School Reality Quest (2017), and the forthcoming poetry collection Drowning in the Floating World (2020). She runs the Magfest MAGES Library blog, which posts accessible academic articles about video games.