HONEY POT
- 1. A quagmire; 2. A children's game...
Mud oozes from the ground around here.
Your leg sinks up to the knee. There's
no time for swinging the child, hands
clasped under her, between us till she
lets go. Milton says women are formed
for softness and sweet grace. But he's
never watched Hannah wiggle her way free
and get lost in the fields out back. She
hoots, You'll never find me now, and if
we try, wading into the soft mush under
a Halloween moon, she hunkers down,
head between her legs, so we swim right
by, it's way past supper now, and grief's
starting to coil around the heart. We've
carried the game too far, some day we'll
have to pay, with a real child who will
get lost, like all the others in this life.
- Stuart Friebert
Stuart Friebert is retired from
the English department
at Oberlin College
All rights to this poem belong to its author.
