well done Sue. it soudns like one of those Autumn goddesses
SallyE
on 15/9/02 1:02 am, Sue Scalf at [log in to unmask] wrote:
> The Only World She Knows*
>
>
> Alone is a word that rolls on the tongue,
> chokes the throat; it is beyond solitude,
> for it offers no choices. It is a landscape
> barren and bleak, gone brown
> with the last of the hay,
> winter soon to come. Here she sits,
> crippled, hair disheveled, one hand
> clawing upward toward the house
> on the top of the treeless hill.
> There is no sound but the wind,
> the whir of grasshoppers.
> Gray as the empty sky, the house
> with its open door calls her in.
> Ladders lean against the roof.
> She knows each room, the barn,
> the clothes line, the world
> from her window.
> All is clean, scoured with light.
> In the night, boards creak,
> clapboards ring with cold.
> Day and night her bones ache
> with a nameless desire.
>
> Based on Christina's World, a painting by Andrew Wythe
>
> Sue Scalf
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