She has the bird right,
even the shadow—
the pearl gray gradations
against the turquoise river—
because she has soared before.
But the bridge. The bridge
bothers her, as she scrapes away
one attempt,
then another,
and another.
She watched it for days,
walked it until she felt
her feet could tell her hands
how to handle it. But the bridge.
Her coloring is correct—
a combination of carmine
and burnt umber, splotches
of sanguine—but the bridge
doesn’t yet live
as only a painting can.
Because she hasn’t borne
the gravity of a turtle
crawling across her bare back
one careful step at a time.
Because she hasn’t stood as stone—
expanding on sultry summer
afternoons, contracting in
crisp winter midnights.
Because she hasn’t wanted
the water to pour through
her pores, to wear her
away over centuries.
But she will.
Kevin Brown
Kevin Brown (he/him) teaches high school English in Nashville. He has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. You can find out more about him and his work on Twitter at @kevinbrownwrite or at http://kevinbrownwrites.weebly.com/.
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