Watching the Detectives
When a neighbour goes missing & bones surface
Our neighbour vanished some time last spring
as if the rain came and took him in
— empty cans on the table
— cigarettes close to breathing
suspects tidied up his den in the week
and hours he went missing
Friends stalked the woods for days
his niece cried during lengthy telephone calls
someone established a Facebook page
while a sizeable group said aliens
had taken him
Others, more mundane, that he fell
victim of crevice or hillside crack
(drugs already in the equation)
clothed in scree and putrid nettles —
after all, would a man in his 70s run away?
Those detectives ‘in charge of the case’
had little to go on. Don’t worry, I said,
something will show up, but in the end
time slowly ticked him to death.
Eventually we heard bones were found
where you went on that scenic walk
with the last man to see
him alive. The shape of things
might suggest old hippies & accidents
& drugs make hasty cover-ups but it’s all
conjecture — when his DNA was confirmed
a new detective went from no case to warm
bones of an alphabet laid down on a trail
on the north hills above San Francisco
more than fifty years after flower power
felt itself leaving the city like
any spreading yet invisible hour
Copyright Simon Heathcote
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