Raw Unfiltered Honey
- Raw Unfiltered Honey
I am six and running, thinkingI’m the same as the swan.Slapping my feet along sandas they slap their black webbed feeton top of waterwings almostin the grip of air. And thenthey rise away from menow stopped and crushed. Whyam I not with them? I watchuntil their disappearance pours meback into myself on earth.I kick a stone. Something I amis not enough. Not the ten-cent comicI get each Sunday after church,or the gold paper ringfrom my father’s cigar he placeson my thumb with ceremony.
I kick a stone.My grandmother says—When a tree falls in the woods, and you are not thereto hear it, it does not make a sound.She wants to prove that I am necessary.
I hear the elm fall in the woods, butI do not feel useful at all and I am restlessfor something I will never call god. [End Page 648]
anne love woodhull is a poet and art therapist who works with children and adults. She is the author of a chapbook, This Is What We Have, and a book of poems, Night with Its Owl. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and has coauthored three children’s books.
