Just published…my poem “Found”

When a special needs child went missing, the neighborhood transformed itself. Here is the poem I wrote to try to capture that moment. It was published April 1, 2026 in Verse-Virtual, an online poetry community publication. You’ll find it HERE.

Found

We left our pools and backyard barbecues

and wandered zombie-like through

our neighborhood—shirtless and barefoot,

pulling children, holding babies, careful

glancing left and right, looking for the child

who was missing. Trying not to go wild.

Woman-child. Sixteen. Down Syndrome.

She never liked to walk. Now she’s gone.

She broke the lock on the doorknob.

Walked away. We all stopped short of

asking out loud—was she taken?

The peaceful neighborhood was shaken.

Neighbors who never spoke

now furtively compared notes:

She was a rabbit in a hutch.

She didn’t like to walk too much.

She liked to sit cross-legged in the grass

playing with a dirty strip from an old foam mat.

She would flap it in the air, a mighty wing.

Would it take her up—to where angels sing?

She could barely make it up or down the stairs.

She liked to sit. She didn’t like chairs.

Now her mother tells us all,

She was on two neighbors’ doorbell

Ring cameras. She was walking that-a-way—

toward the pond, the marsh, the highway.

Across the highway, blazing bright yellow

was the strip of sign, the Dollar General.

That’s where they found her. 

She had walked half a mile.

She sat cross-legged with a bag of chips 

and a toy plane in the cosmetics aisle.

The bag was unopened. 

The toy was still in its package.

She sat and looked at them,

her eyes filled with sadness.

We went back to our pools and barbecues.