The Boy and the Lake

I don’t remember what I was doing on the night when the boy went missing.
They say he was last seen by the lake. I’ve heard that on that night
the dusk decayed until only a few tendrils of light were left,
before the moon swooped up like a pail of poison, its luminescence
dripping from the tangled branches. The police searched
throughout the night. Their flashlights shone
their fists of light, and their pack of hounds
sniffed the black, wet dirt surrounding the lake.
I heard they searched for hours, but could not find
a drop of blood.
The boy’s parents believe it was a murder:
that someone lured the boy to the lake, for no one would go to the lake alone
because hunters hide snares in the cattails that wave like thousands of hands.
They found it odd that, on the night of his disappearance, no one claimed
to have seen him, so the boy’s parents pinned pictures to telephone poles,
and the police issued an Amber Alert before interrogating the old man
living in the decrepit house with the stone angels in the front yard
just north of the lake.
On one night, I walked to the edge of the woods
to see the scene for myself. Through the trees, I could see the lake—
it was blacker than the space between stars and its bank overgrown
with weeds and grasses—and, in the distance, a ruffling of foliage.