Oak Tree Spirits

"My name is Mrs. Lindsey and I'll be your teacher. Raise your hand when I call your name." She began reading the names, holding her breath each time a boy's name was called. And then, "Thomas Maxwell." Her eyes sought the last seat, fourth row. His hand was raised. Timid eyes met hers, eyes as familiar to her as her own. "God in heaven, this boy is my grandchild ," she thought. She felt dazed, unable to move, caught in a dream. She heard herself speaking, saw herself handing out the office cards for them to fill out. "Print your name on the top line. On the next line print your father's name and your mother's name. Then print the names of your brothers and sisters if you have any." The small hand went up. "Yes, Thomas , what is it?" "I don't know what to put where it says mother's name. Should I put my mother's name or my stepmother's name"? Evie could feel the tears knot in her throat. "Whom do you live with, Thomas , your mother or your stepmother?" Oak Tree Spirits I see their shadows among the leaves Their twisted forms writhing in bark and root Their shining bodies poised on twig and thorn-tip. I hear their old, muffled grey rumblings, Their furtive voices and creaking sighs, Their light, wild whispers. Awakened from a thousand-year sleep In rotting oak wood, My eye cracks open like an acorn. They have answered me with their names: I go to call them up. —Lorena Babcock "I live with my dad and my stepmother and their new baby. And my dad's not my real dad. I don't know my real dad. Nobody will tell me. I don't know what to put where it says brothers and sisters, either. My mother took my brother, he's really my half brother, and went away. Should I put his name where it says "brother's name"? "Is he in school in this county?" "No. This summer my mother took him and went away with some man to California. I don't know where they are. She never called or nothing. Now I have a stepmother." He bent over the card and began printing laboriously. The boy's tee shirt was threadbare, and when Evie bent over him she saw the red welts on his back. The attendance book slipped from her grasp. She clapped her hand over her mouth and fled from the room, twenty pairs of eyes following her in surprised silence. Tommy did not notice. He was too busy erasing. Then in the space for "Father's Name," he wrote the same thing he had written after "Mother's Name." He wrote, "Don't know." Metamorphosis Monarch in a jar beats its wings in frantic animation against unrelenting glass. Too soon it will tire, transforming into a tarnished gilt carcass on a whimsical nine-year-old's shelf. With chameleon eyes you cage my heart. Its youthful pound becomes a flutter in your gaze, sometimes a gentle olive, other times a stark, bitter chocolate. —Carmon Hacker ...