Where Are The Girls?

//where are the girls

“Where Are The Girls?”

“Play your flute
until the shadow
of the branch lies alongside
the well,”
she told her son.
He picked up a flute
of bone of crane
and blew a tune
with ancient wind
in its soul,
while near him
his baby sister
danced.

Later, the well
in deep shadow,
his mother
sent him with other boys
to sit below leafy rustling trees,
and play his flute,
while crickets shrilled
in the suffocating summer night
and a little girl screamed
for a while.