Captors

    by Jodi L. Hottel

Breathless, they rush up

to me in the front yard,

cuff my wrist with the vigorous

fingers of youth and invite me

to be their prisoner, locked away

in their fortress. They beckon

toward a circle of redwoods,

moaning under silk scarves

that flutter with their eager breath,

await my reply.

I glimpse it –

the redwood castle, blue

and white draperies of sky,

a world created simply

by speaking it. I protest –

I ought to go back inside,

return to the adult world.

So they release me, unharmed,

and fly off, limbs and scarves

fluttering in their wake.

© 2011 Jodi L. Hottel

Jodi L. Hottel is a writer and retired English teacher, living in Santa Rosa, CA. Her work was published in Touch: The Journal of Healing, as well as the English Journal, The Dickens, Frogpond and anthologies from the University of Iowa Press, Tebot Bach, and the Healdsburg Arts Council. She is currently working on her first chapbook, a gathering of poems about the Japanese American internment.