Growth Spurt
By Robert Wooten

Raymond begins to slouch on the school bus
so that his own growth spurt
will not cause him to hit his head
before he knows it. He slouches
when walking through the halls at school, too,
because he recently grew an inch
in a month and a half. It is wise
to be prepared for what could be.
No one has told him how tall
that he may grow, and nobody ever told him
that he would grow up so fast.
Clothes into which he is expected to grow
are rolled up around his ankles
and wrists. Everytime that he takes a step,
he hears the hollow end in one of his shoes.
There is so much that he could do
that it is difficult for him to commit to
doing anything as he already does it,
but in each moment he keeps in mind what could be.
What could be is mostly in the future for him now,
and it is something for which not only he
but also his parents and the city and state are paying.

I earned an MFA in poetry from the University of Alabama (1998) and earned an MA with a creative writing focus from North Carolina State University (1994). Numerous periodicals have published my poems, currently published in The Blind Man's Rainbow and others. A limited edition chapbook of my poems, Raymond Poems, was published in 1998.