more than fireflies we climb up to the heat of the loft in the camp my daddy built with his proud bare hands it's the summer of '62 and there's so much I don't understand like why we capture fireflies and keep them captive in a jar with a hole-poked lid what? so they can breathe while we torture them? so we can see in the darkness? hell it's going to take more than fireflies to see beneath this tightly woven tent and why my brother and sister would ask me to do this unspeakable thing so what if I'm young enough there'll be no evidence and why my favorite poem the only poem I ever memorized is about two little children left in the woods to die I sit on the rough wood floor between two used-up mattresses my brother sits on one my sister sits on the other four decades later in this far-away place salty wet that childhood poem returns: don't you remember the babes in the woods? don't you remember the babes in the woods? still so much I don't understand I search the dark caverns of my mind and pray (c) Hazel S. Hutchinson 2003 |
Hazel S. Hutchinson Lives with "the man of her dreams" in the Midwest. Although Hazel has had many poems published, she says the true focus of her writing remains therapeutic -- and is currently working on a manuscript entitled One Match, Coming through the Fire. |
