Pussy Willow

frozen lakes and skating on silver wings like Hans Brinker and the silver skates, or like the story about the girl who met and fell in love with a boy at the skating rink who said he'd be back the next night. When the girl returned, the boy was not there and she knew he'd never return. "You're lazy," Jane righteously announced , settling herself before the chipped low veneer dresser and combing her blonde curls. "You're slow and you're lazy." "Oh, hush," Lanie retorted and rolled to the side of the bed and slowly rose. Reluctantly she turned down the corner of a page in her book and laid it on the bedside table. It was suppertime and she was frozen through and through. She tried to avoid her brother's smirking glance as he said, "Did you get cheerleading?" "No," she answered shortly. "What can you expect of an old maid?" he laughed with a gleam in his shifty eyes. She felt tears come but she bit them away and picked up her fork to eat the macaroni and tomatoes and fried salt pork. She buttered her cornbread. She could feel all their eyes upon her. "I won't let them know I care," she thought and indifferently wrested her food down, lingering longer at the table than usual. After dark came, she crept out to the old pump in the front yard, hid from the house by a hawthorne bush that seemed to have lived eternally. She smelled the light fragrance of the hawthorne flowers and the strong scent of mellow honeysuckle. Her eyes swept to the garden on the right, to the long line of straight black locusts that bordered its farthest end. Like me, she thought, straight, plain, ugly. But the stars twinkled out one by one, and a half moon winked at her. The wind moved softly through the pine behind her. It was a sad but comforting sound. She propped her elbows on her knees and rested her face in her hands. How black was the night, how secretive, how soft, alluring yet terror-free. The old willow tree caught glimmers from the moonlight. A poem began to be born in her. It was about the locusts-straight, black, ugly, casting long shadows in the evening but at night cradling the moon in their highflung boughs. Maybe it's not so important to know how to kiss after all, she thought. Pussy Willow Along creek's eroded edge We steered our willow podsSmall vessels in the muddy swell of spring. Criss-crossing on our hands and knees Slim bridges made of fallen trees We brought our ships to port on lengths of string. Pink from the wind and warm from play We dawdled through the bogs Exclaiming over clumps of white and blues. Entertaining thoughts of food We came triumphant from the wood With gifts of violets and muddy shoes. -Susan Staff 53 ...