At a pretty roadside pullout in God’s country,
I spotted one of the missing persons flyers
From last winter still posted to a tree.
The teenagers shown on the flyer disappeared
Not far from here. It was feared they’d been lost
In the desert, perhaps out camping on a lark.
Those sorts of deaths and disappearances
Happen in these parts. But they weren’t lost,
And they weren’t runaways. They’d been murdered
By another, older couple, their acquaintances,
A brute and his apparently willing accomplice.
They had been taken out into the wilderness,
And the boy had been beaten to death
While the girl was forced to watch, then the girl
Was beaten to death herself. Their bodies
Were tossed down an abandoned mineshaft,
And their car towed to a reservoir and sunk.
After months, the murderer and the accomplice
Were arrested on other charges and questioned,
And the accomplice took the authorities
To the mineshaft where the bodies were found,
A hundred feet or more below ground. Now,
The bodies have been reburied and the media
Has bruited this, the accomplice’s account.
I’m sure one day a movie will be made.
Most of the flyers have come down. Today,
A pair of cyclists pedaled past the turnout
Talking cheerfully in the same language
As spoken by the teenagers and their attackers,
In the same language, using many of the same
Words as have found themselves in this poem,
And one cyclist shouted happily to the other,
“What a day! God’s country, hey?”
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