| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
ON HEARING THE NEWS OF YOUR HOSPITALIZATION
(A CBE for Teresa)
Jim Zola
(Melic Review Roundtable)
I walk to the edge of the yard barefoot
to fetch yesterday's news. Tottering between
last dark and first light, morning is almost a question.
Yes, the sun comes up again. My three-year-old
is amazed by the earth's consistency.
There are things that still amaze me, simple
things -- the muscle tick on a horse's thigh,
the scent that lingers after love, the skewed
lament of a crazy girl's cry.
In Michigan we lived on Hoover Street
next-door to the Crazy Girl, what we called her,
we being my wife and I. The girl
lived in the house with her mom and dad.
She talked to herself, argued. It seems those days,
houses were closer together, walls thinner.
We heard her through open windows. She stood
outside for hours, or sat in her car.
It wasn't the words we heard but the tone
of her voice, calm or suddenly rising.
Although sometimes we passed, coming or going,
we never spoke. Then one day she was gone
and I found myself missing her the way
a favorite shirt, sleeves worn away, is missed.
And so I began to talk to myself,
gentle arguments, debates. That summer,
a raccoon took residence in the walls
of our attic. I worked nights and so
never heard the claws ticking against drywall.
My wife did and would describe the sounds.
It was as if the house were haunted, as if
the crazy girl had come back. I thought
my wife had taken a step in that direction.
I never heard the sounds myself.
Then, one early evening, I saw a raccoon
the size of a small dog waddle across
our yard and down the street as if she owned
the neighborhood. She did. A few nights later,
when we were sure she was out prowling,
we boarded up the hole that gave her
entrance to our life.
I digress. What I want to say is the horse
becomes part of the field, love settles
If we work it just right, the world doesn't matter.
We go on in sadness, in love, in the lost song
of a mad girl who we claim to be our own.
Judge Robert Sward's comment: “Vivid, painful, moving and spare.”
About the InterBoard Poetry Competition
Archive of IBPC Winners
Honorable Mentions, April 2001
