Image by: Judd McCullum.

homeplace
The old house is empty now, save for the ghosts
of green-eyed deer who nightly graze the yard,
startling at the blink of their own eyes blinking
back at them from black windows. Save
for furniture stacked and waiting.
Save for the mice-addled organ that used
to breathe hymns. Underneath the grey planks,
the spindled posts turned by machine,
a log-bodied house has long been covered up—
blood memory of old timbers, sap dried away,
chewed by carpenter bees that turn it to dust.
One exterior wall without windows or correlation
to the inside was alive with bees when I was a child.
I would lean in to hear the hum within.

Annie Woodford lives in Roanoke, Virginia where she is a teacher at Virginia Western Community College. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Appalachian Heritage, The Comstock Review, Cold Mountain Review, The Chattahoochee Review, and The Normal School, among others.

Read our interview with Annie here.