February 2017
Joyce S. Brown
jsbrown1939@gmail.com
I’m a retired English teacher (high school and college) with 53 years of marriage, two children, four grandchildren, one dog. I’ve had poems in Poetry, The American Scholar, The Tennessee Review, Yankee, and others! 


In the Beginning                                         


If I could paint,
I would not take
as a subject a vase
or even a face.
I’d want to put
on the canvas what
I think God looks like.
I’ve seen Him drawn
in sky-blue robes,
his long white beard
blowing in blustery wind.
But the God in my mind
is made of mud and oil,
blood and straw,
stone and feather,
mixed together.
The crucial feature
is the eye—whether
one like Cyclops,
many like Argos,
or two like us—a little
lower than the angels.
God sees the whole mess,
and says: “It is good.”  
©2017 Joyce S. Brown
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