Lost Things

Curtains flutter over the nursery sill, Waiting for their mother to find The coverlet tossed aside, hanging still, Patiently expecting mother to right the spill, The beds, empty, the windows, the open kind; Stars twinkle, restlessly above, for their mother to kiss them goodnight, As a girl sits alone, tickled by lilac and foxglove, Without her darling boys like a solitary dove, Thinking of a nursery far from the starlight, The empty nursery, soon to be found, Soon to be an empty treasure chest, Without the starlings, lost, dead, drowned, Their pied piper a rooster with a crown, Who flew them away from the nest, The darling mother ought not to cry, The lost little girl should wipe away her tear, And never run. But fly For life will say with a sigh And what is lost is always near.