The Fugitive slept through the first dangerous night
With augmented vigilance towards the sky.
Search planes meticulously detect
through isolated landscapes
far from any human habitation.
Frequencies diminished
for searches are haphazard
with communities far behind.
The fugitive tentatively rode through daylight
for unknown landscapes hold hidden,
unfamiliar perils.
Cold liquid rushes through roadside gullies,
while creatures hide amongst
dark and mysterious forests.
The fugitive enjoyed
the throaty warble of new birds nearby,
and listening to the wind shift
the leafs in the trees,
Never having felt these simple moments
of exquisite happiness.
The Fugitive most relentless fears
of starvation appear.
Tortured by hunger,
forced to hack away with stone,
at raw skin of fish.
The fugitive
once yearning for choice,
then with choice,
made wrong ones,
remembering,
suddenly,
grimly,
living a life hungry
for feelings,
colour,
and love.
For the child
had no choice at life at all.
This poem is inspired from chapter 21-23 in The Giver by Lois Lowry.