Poems - Anna Writes The Number 1 (500 words)

Poems - Anna Writes The Number 1 (500 words)

Holding the stick that a moment before
she had used to pound a rock
as if it were a drum,
Anna drew the first number she had learned.

The number was like the straight stick she held.
It was a tall straight line, a 1.

Then using the stick,
she retraced the shape and whispered to herself, “one”.

She didn’t name one of anything.
What she felt was a quiet emptiness.
Somehow the number created a great circle of space,
light, and peace in her.

Anna wondered why this number made her feel so peaceful
and because she loved the peaceful feeling,
she retraced the shape over and over
softly pressing the stick into the sweet-smelling earth.

When a small pebble fell into the groove she was making,
Anna carefully lifted it and placed it outside of the one.

She said, One, if you were a plant, I’d water it.
She laughed but,
if I water you, you will turn into a long, little puddle,
and then into mud.

Anna looked up at the brightly shining sun,
felt its warmth on her body,
and saw how its light filled the groove she’d made.

One side is light, one is shadow, she said.

Then she added, One, you can be one of anything,
1 sun, 1 earth, 1 tree, 1 me;
you don’t belong to any one thing.

Anna whispered, one is just an idea, a most definite idea.
She liked that idea.
She felt she liked it because she did not fully understand it.
There was room for her mind to grow into it.

Anna drew a circle around the 1 and looked at the round ant hill.

Each ant was carrying one thing.
One ant carried a pebble.
Another a bit of leaf.
Another carried an insect wing that glowed like a rainbow.

The pebble was being carried out of the ant hill.
The bit of leaf and the rainbow wing were going steadily toward it.

Anna looked beyond the ants to a tall pine tree.
She wondered how many years it took the tree
to make such a tall 1 reaching.

A bird swooped down and landed at the tree’s top and began singing.

Anna’s breath grew soft.
Everything was so bright, so still.
She knew the earth was turning and wondered why she felt it turning only sometimes,
mostly when the wind blew, or when riding her bike fast.

Anna took another slow deep breath and said,
One sun, one sky, one tree, one bird, one song.
How can there possibly be so many ones?

Using her stick Anna turned the number one into a capital letter.
The one was now an I.
Anna put an eye on each side of the I.
The I looked like a skinny nose.
She put a smiling mouth underneath the nose
and long hair on top of the circle.

Anna smiled at the picture and said,
How can it possibly be
I’m so lucky, I get to be one me.
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