Seek
From outside,
a young voice calls out numbers.
The voice
could belong to girl or boy, it is high,
sweet, sexless.
I part the blinds, as if nudging bangs
from an eye,
a brow. A girl, fingers over her face,
counts. Twelve
Mississippi, thirteen Mississippi, fourteen
Mississippi.
She wants the hider to hear her, sends
the vocalized
seconds into the yard, the red bougainvillea,
the parked cars
lining the block. Twenty-one, twenty-two
twenty-three,
twenty-four. She switches to only numbers
as she becomes
confident in her pacing. She was right
to put the state
inside the seconds. What a struggle it is
to stand in
the territory hidden between moments.
This is charming, Hannah, and delivers such a deep conclusion.
ReplyDeleteThis is amazing juxtaposed with the image of Horseshoe Bend Battlefield. I saw the girl in the poem as awaiting her inevitable capture and removal.
ReplyDelete"The territory hidden between moments"...lovely Hannah! xoxo
ReplyDeleteI love the way the blinds are parted, and the concept of the territory hidden between moments. This poem captures perfectly that feeling of childhood hide and seek, and the adult looking back on that experience. In other words, the watcher from the window (and the reader), can put themselves in the place of the child.
ReplyDelete