“This will be a sign to you: you shall find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
~ Luke 2:12

Morning rush hour – on the side of the road:
the burned-out shell of a car. All that’s left

is blackened metal, crumpled and twisted like
a wad of paper tossed aside and forgotten.

From my car, which moves like a snail in a
creeping line of snails, I see pink cloth fluttering.

My wonder that color has survived turns to horror
as I realize it is a cloth for swaddling, tattered now,
melded to what is left of an inverted car seat.

I want to know what became of the child,
an innocent hurled too soon into a world of danger.

A wordless cry finds its voice within me; a question
begets another question and, still, I’m stuck in traffic.

Through tumbling tears I know: I must look this season
for the missing child in the eyes of the child I find.