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      February 13, 2022The Boy in the WellJayne Marek

      Now the dead boy signifies there is no
      grammar of hope anymore, the map’s split
      open one hundred feet deep to where the slow
      dark film unreeled for the child. Heavy,
      the rescuers dug down to their own great
      alienation—so deep, they knew they were
      ships sinking, shifting in gravel that whispered
      like lessening breaths, to learn at the end
      that, no, never again would the father
      hold up a kite to show the boy whose eyes
      loved Moroccan sky, blue as his own veins.
      Now the sun fire eats the village of grief.
      Now the mother wants only to retrace
      her steps to the morning four days past,
      the father cannot bear to look at his land,
      his heritage that swallowed the boy. The
      parents are breaking, the cows and donkeys
      agog, even the curious slinking jackals
      sense the void that answers the parents
      who call and call, without words, his name.

      from Poets Respond

      Jayne Marek

      “Like millions of people worldwide, I was captured by the saga of the attempted rescue of a seven-year-old from an earthen well in Morocco, and sensed the community’s intense hope and torment.”