Brian McKee

Low Water Bridge

There, on the river, the neighbor’s daughter
died. I thought of her on walks, watching spears
of cattails shard out of bankside muck
and the clementine sash of oriole
racing through.  Toeing the low curb on
the bridge they built to sluice the trunks
flashed down from high water, I snail past
the no fishing sign, neck craned out to watch
the skin of stones get nicked with minnow
bodies in the shallow bed.  The chirping
of excavators took months to break up
the old forms, dam and drop fresh piers
in the silt laced with ribs of rebar,
that drowned out her brothers, playing in the yard.

Brian McKee is a writer living in the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia. He works in tourism, teaches creative writing, and runs a small cooking shop with his family. He has work forthcoming in Neologism Poetry Journal and his adventures documented @dryadcookery