Found and lost

While renovating our postwar bungalow,

under a kitchen floorboard we found a fifty-

year-old cache: cash, a pen, and a spiralbound

diary, whose writer had hidden this lifeline

from her husband, a battering drunk,

as the tiny pages cramped with cursive told us

over and over like a scratched record

broken with calls to her daughter

driven from that bad abode and feared lost;

and the cash was for her, and we saved

these things to give her, if you see her.