Two Poems
Barbara Swift Brauer Elegy for the Naturalist When he left my father took nothing of his long life. The world remains. Every shoot and early leaf, every bird note in the restless canopy. Each star in its orbit, the sky flung wide above the Texas desert. Storm Blows in from the Coast The music begins in the wind-whipped trees, storm rhythms intensify as the flood rises in water time. A bay tree falls, splays branches over road and fences, the spaces of the sky still visible between its leaves. Nothing remains in the old containers. Water, the color of hillsides, is everywhere, glossy with the sheen of the day. Oh but the night is black. We lean into the candlelight, adjust our schedules, face the windy dark one halo at a time. The small globes flicker. Day, the wild-eyed storm gone from the yards, leaves us shipwrecked in our debris. Rings on a cut log precise as a gunwale. We carry the mermaids, dripping, back to their coves as the sea clears. |
|

About the Author: Barbara Swift Brauer is a freelance writer living in San Geronimo, California. Her poems have appeared in journals, anthologies, and art exhibitions. With portrait artist Jackie Kirk, she is co-author of the nonfiction book, Witness: The Artist's Vision in The Face of AIDS (Pomegranate Artbooks, 1996). Her poetry collection, At Ease in the Borrowed World, was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2013. Her forthcoming collection, Rain, Like a Thief, will be published by Sixteen Rivers in April 2019