Sara Tracey teaches English Composition while pursuing her MFA in Poetry
through the NEOMFA: Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Art in Creative Writing
Program.  Her work has recently appeared in The Akros Review.
Hobble Creek Review
Hobble Creek Review
Sara Tracey
THE ORCHARD


I dug my toes in the mud,
felt wet dirt suck like tongues,
and called this place home.

I counted twelve paces
from creek bank to fence post.  
Beneath a fallen hawthorn
with barbs two inches long
and wide as pencil tips,
I built  my fortress
of sticks and strings.
I kept out the lurking sister
and her irreverent friends.

I climbed the wooded hill
to the sweet gum tree,
watched semis fly past like dragons,
traced incantations in black soil
with dirty finger nails,
licked the scent of honeysuckle,
and counted clouds between boughs
to the cadence of an old Ford tractor.

Wild raspberries kept me full
until boys came across the creek,
tore crab apples from branches
and pelted me.  My hands,
stained with berry blood,
wanted to fight, but I had nothing,
not tall enough to reach
or fast enough to run.

I bent to their insistence.
My toes forgot the mud
as I learned of other tongues,
sweeter than honeysuckle,
fresher than the grass beneath my back.