Joanne Lowery, “Brush”
Brush
Joanne Lowery
On the beach behind a cheap motel in Florida
a lanky fifteen-year-old decided to test the waters.
This was years ago, on the Atlantic side,
and no one else enjoyed the sand, no lifeguard
kept watch over nothing. The boy
took a stroll straight out to see how far
he could keep going, feet bobbing to the bottom.
Most of us have done the same,
though most of us would not have walked
so far from shore, arms cresting the waves,
our soft hair thrown back and floating.
When the reef dropped off when his long legs dangled
and the cross-tide took him a foot or two
on its way to England, the young swimmer
was not really surprised.
It was as logical for him to be swept away
as anyone else. If only he had stayed
back home in the middle of the USA
where blue meant delphiniums
and water was only rain.
He had not yet touched a girl
and already he was in over his head,
most of life’s books unread, places unseen,
the terrible negative undone all around
perversely carrying him out
into the current of possibility
that finally let him stroke, lungs brimming,
back where once he came from –
the sand felt just the same to all ten toes,
the vacancy sign rose above the tile roof
of the room his family was renting,
the room where he returned
and dried off without word of his escape.
The next day they left and drove part of the way
to the rest of his life. Everything all around
was edged with a sharp black line.
When years later he told the story
to answer a question about fear
he talked about the expanse of ripples,
salt burning his throat,
how impossible that he could have ended there.
* * *
[Source: I do not know where this poem originally appeared, and any information would be appreciated so I can give appropriate attribution.]
Tags: Brush, Joanne Lowery
Contemplating a brush with death from the distance of years only increases the “what if” factor. I appreciate your having shared this poem. Wish I knew the source. Good luck finding out just where it came from.
Lowery, Joanne. “Brush.” Liberty, March 1997, 10(4): 67.
http://www.libertyunbound.com/sites/files/printarchive/Liberty_Magazine_March_1997.pdf
http://www.perigee-art.com/departments/4.php
Joanne Lowery was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and educated at the University of Michigan and University of Wisconsin. Her poems have appeared in many literary magazines, including Birmingham Poetry Review, 5 AM, Passages North, Atlanta Review,Poetry East, Poet Lore, Parting Gifts, SpoonRiver Poetry Review, and River Styx. Her most recent collections are Seven Misters from Pygmy Forest Press and two chapbooks (Poems that Work and Sweat) from Snark Publishing. She lives in Michigan.
Artist’s Statement:
Writing poetry is the ultimate conjurer’s trick: how to replicate the life of the mind within the confines of language. Though the general public persists in thinking that poetry is about “feelings,” I would argue that it’s much more about thinking, verbal craft, and the ways each of us processes experience. From all that swirls inside any person’s mind, some things rise to the top, link up with kindred or alien ideas and mental pictures, then find their distinctive vocabulary.
For me, this means I have to do a lot of reading (most of it not poetry but fiction and history) looking for details and images that snag my interest. For example, the scene in “Hunt, 1831″ (see poems below, and in the poetry section of this issue of Perigee) came to me from reading a book about the Santa Fe Trail, though my imagination added the antelope and embellished the setting. I especially like to write in different voices, such as the flip tone of “Clark Gable as Muse,” (again, see below) and in historical contexts, exploring aspects of incongruity, sometimes in multi-poem series as variations on themes.
There’s a famous quote by Williams about how people die miserably every day from a lack of what is found in poetry. I’m not sure that’s literally true, though of course we all know people who seem to have no imaginative life or understanding of life’s quintessential mystery. Poetry is so very much inside the poet’s head (and secondarily in the reader’s) that it may not be doing much good in terms of rescuing us from day-to-day frustrations or global problems. But poetry is something many of us certainly need, as basic to our human nature as storytelling, religion, and the desire for intimacy.
Writing poems gives me tremendous pleasure, and I think of it as having made my life much more interesting than it would otherwise be. If other people find pleasure in my poems, so much the better.
Thanks for the source reference, Halidryn.