Poem by Sherry O'Keefe
Photo by Jill Burhans
Photo by Jill Burhans
When to Speak of Bridges, When to Speak of Getting Old She wears the old blue shirt, scrubbed the night before. On her knees along the water's edge, knuckles against the fabric. In last week’s dream she felled a tree across the creek, using a simple hatchet. Bridges are a promise to return. Perhaps this is what she’ll tell them as they hike—mother, son and daughter—below the sanded cliffs, smoothed and hardened into rock centuries before they hear the wounded sound of a deer crashing down through thickets of willow-whips, milkweed and barren red chokecherry. Son steps toward the cry, daughter hides behind her. Now is not the time to leave them, their mother learns. Only one is ready. |