I went lookin’ for you…out in the woods where we used to play hide and go seek as children…behind tall trees with thick trunks…piles of leaves left from long ago…aged and brown…

looked down by the brook that runs over rocks and sandy pebbles…down ’round a cave filled with bats and green snakes…Sun goin’ down…mischief ’bout to start…

and so I looked for you amongst the pines…oaks…and maples…listened to whipperwails and cicadas…a hoot owl hummed along…

this was the place where our imaginations went wild…playing war in the woods with walkee-talkees and toy guns…fightin’ the communists in Vietnam…headin’ north into Cambodia in search of Pol Pot…bein’ captured by yellow men and then escapin’ in the middle of the night like real American heroes…real American heroes…

started lookin’ for you at Sunrise and when the Moon came up we pulled out flashlights and weaved our way through mud and wet grass…led by a ray like when we were kids and had sleepovers in the backyard…playin’ tag in the midnight hour…tellin’ each other shhhh…don’t wake up the parents…and we’d laugh and laugh and laugh…never stop laughin’…

I looked for you…for twenty-four hours I looked for you…didn’t wanna give up the search…but it dawned on me…

you were gone…