Two Months Later

We hadn’t seen the boy
For days, our thoughts he
Might have joined the army,
Recruitment tactics might have snared
Him, he always liked racing cars,
We thought the promise of Humvees
Turned him into a soldier.

Then two months later,
A rehash of his death,
The news saying how he had
Crashed into a tree
At sixty mph, one fatality, just
Him.

And so our
Little puzzle solved, we
Tried to imagine how
We missed his death, no one
Telling us, no one crooking a finger
Across the path, giving
Us the news personally.

Instead, it was in the news,
Not friend to friend,
The yellow ribbon on the tree
Not an anti-war complaint,
But a symbol of a drunk death,
The boy killed by alcohol
And speed, an after midnight
Tragedy we had sensed
But hadn’t felt till now.