At nine o’clock the next morning
we meet at the church.
Nobody has slept. We don’t say much.

Carolann paces the sidewalk awhile,
then reads her new Nancy Drew.
Malcolm hums some blues tunes

and tosses rocks across the parking lot.
I try aiming my kaleidoscope
at the stained glass windows, but it doesn’t
look any different unless the sun shines right
into them. The truth is,

we are afraid to go back and look at the hole
we left there late last night,
carefully covered in loose dirt, plastic,
and leafy branches
and protected with the fallen tree,
the hole with the mermaid carved in iron
at the bottom.

We stay there all morning.
Finally, I say: “OK. We have to get
a grip on this… we found something, but it’s
stuck under a lot of rocks and roots
we can’t move. So … let’s meet tonight at eight-forty-five
in Carolann’s family’s van,
and let’s make a plan.”

We stagger separately to our homes.

I lie down on my bed,
point my kaleidoscope at the ceiling light,
watch the patterns scatter, the pieces
slide apart and come back together
in ways I hadn’t noticed before.