ELLEN STONE

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Girth

For years, I thought of my body as wisp 

wisp, wisp. I could slide through anything, 

wave to and from like a frond, brief stem 

or if left alone, fern, cosmos, incorporeal. 

But when I found love or love I thought 

would stay, I rooted thick like a sunflower 

out in Kansas, sticky stalk that grips earth 

then flares into fire. Maybe it was giving 

birth or living in the Midwest— now I see  

girth grounds, keeps me. Granny standing 

solid in the flower garden, her gladiolas  

like swords toward the summer trees. Now 

my body is house, wood stacked against 

a bad winter and all the gardens swollen 

fat with whatever sweetness I can gather.

b 

b

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ELLEN STONE advises a poetry club at Community High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan where she taught special education in the public schools and raised three daughters with her husband. Ellen co-hosts a monthly poetry series, Skazat! and is a co-editor of Public School Poetry. Her poems have appeared most recently or are forthcoming in Third Coast, Cold Mountain Review and About Place Journal. Ellen is the author of The Solid Living World (Michigan Writers’ Cooperative Press, 2013) and What Is in the Blood (Mayapple Press, 2020). Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Ellen can be contacted at www.ellenstone.org. 

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