June 2016
Kathleen Brewin Lewis
klew1215@bellsouth.net
klew1215@bellsouth.net
I'm a Georgia writer who focuses on the natural and the lyrical. I love to hike along the Chattahoochee River in Atlanta, the beach at Tybee Island, and the mountains of western North Carolina. My daughter has recently moved to Boulder, Colorado, and I'm looking forward to learning the trails there. My first chapbook, Fluent in Rivers, was published by FutureCycle Press in 2014, and my second chapbook, July's Thick Kingdom, in December of 2015. Recent publication credits include Southern Humanities Review, The Tishman Review, Cider Press Review, and Menacing Hedge.
Interior Scene with Family & Small Bird
Once when you and your brother were small,
we filled a plastic feeder with sweet red water.
I climbed the stepladder, hung it
outside the dining room window.
You weren’t sure you’d seen a hummingbird before,
so your brother described one to you:
How tiny it was, how quick. How its wings
beat so fast, they disappeared.
We were vigilant at mealtimes, looked up at every bite.
Then one supper, after we’d said grace and you were
telling your dad about your day—the books you’d brought home
from the preschool library, the classroom hedgehog--
one appeared, fairy-like, treading air beside the feeder.
You sucked in your breath;
the four of us exchanged sideways glances.
Everybody freeze, I whispered,
laying one finger across my lips.
But of course, we didn’t.
(originally published in Southern Women’s Review)
In June, summer
circles back like a canyon condor.
The precocious valley greens
with Queen Anne’s lace and clover,
droning bees, clicking grasshoppers.
Late-blooming mountains are still
dark with conifers, their highest ground
pale with morning frost. The fox’s kits
huddle in their hillside den. Before long
they will make their way down
to the sundrenched valley, leap
through tall grass, feast on lizards,
dewlaps flashing bright as berries.
(originally published in Still: The Journal)
©2016 Kathleen Brewin Lewis