March 2016
Kathleen Brewin Lewis
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.


​Re-turning


I have been gone from here long enough
to startle at the sight of seagulls
in the Publix parking lot
where I have come to collect
my mother’s prescriptions.
They strut the asphalt, circle
the cart return. Their cries 
set off a spinning in my head.
I dislocate the day, recall salt water.
At the center of this gyre: 
my father and me,
on the beach building drip castles,
hands curved into birds’ beaks,
sand liquescent dribbling 
through our fingers. The sea
flings sheets upon the shore.
                   
-originally published in Curio Poetry



Back to the River


Everywhere I look 
there is work to be done: 
the feeding of the poor, 
the rescue of damaged children, 
a need to understand 
the diminishment of the aged. 
There are also the dishes, 
smeared with remnants of rich stew,
clumps of yellow day lilies 
in want of division, 
windowpanes perpetually smudged 
because a resolute cardinal 
keeps pecking to come in. 
When I return 
to walk along the Chattahoochee,
I note with envy the grace 
of the great blue heron, 
which opens its wide wings
and sails across the water, 
steps delicately along the bank,
always seems to know 
which way to turn.
    
-originally published as part of a larger piece in Slice of Life
©2016 Kathleen Brewin Lewis