Missing Persons Poem by Diana van den Berg

Dear God, Flicka, Daisy and Tigger
Thank you
for my new babies.
I can’t write about them yet,
but you know I will
when I can.

All four of you know
I appreciate your two precious gifts,
And I love them with all my heart,
I do, I do.
They are my sanity
and my refuge
and they cocoon me
in their love and adoration,
and we are learning
to become a family,
but oh, the 3 horse-dog-cat-shaped holes
in my soul,
spread to my heart
and, ripped, it forgets to beat,
and despite Benji-licks and Cleo-purrs,
my lungs won’t
breathe,
and in doubled-up anguish
I struggle
to be.

It would be so easy, God,
so easy,
like so many, many times before,
to gaze into their eyes in turn
and kiss Flicka on the nose
and purr-stroke Tigger
and wag-pat Daisy
and exclude the world
in our bonded happiness,
so very, very easy
... if only, if only they were
... here.

(15 January 2011)