Poetry By Marda Messick

       R. Miller CC



The Spring 

I lived with my children and a man not their father 
in a half-built house on an old logging road.

We drank from a pipe     that ran from a spring 
and when the pipe froze we drank melted snow.

When the boy wet the bed every night in his sleep
the man made him wash his sheets in a tub. 

When the girl left her coat the man made her walk
the three miles to school and all the way back.

When I left him we hid until it was safe
and moved to a town in the east of the state. 
 
I think of the spring that welled in the woods
and I think of the wood that burned in the stove. 

Kind water and wood that did not condemn
but gave all we took for thirst and for cold.

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Marda Messick is a poet writing in Tallahassee, Florida. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Verse-Virtual, Muleskinner Review,
The Christian Century, Literary Mama, Delmarva Review, and other publications.
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