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Click title to download microchap
Cover: ‘Cloud Painting by Rappahannock’ Collage
by JanK
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Portal
Sometimes the water, glassy-still
was a portal into a mirror world.
The girl would stare until the clouds
in the river became the only clouds
in the sky and she floated away
from this life into another world.
And sometimes, when she painted the river
she caught the sky instead.
Clouds upon clouds upon clouds
like white caps on rapids.
When she was little and alone
she’d pretend to walk the ceiling,
laying on her back, legs dangled,
up or down had no meaning anymore.
Sometimes when she painted the river
she fell into the sky instead.
Portrait of an Artist on the
Rappahannock River
She watches the shad fishers
wading deep at Falmouth Flats
current pushing around them
as they cast their lines, teasing
flies over the surface of the water.
Single-minded and starved
the shad bite at everything:
shiny, silvery, flashes of scale and tail.
Her brush tries to keep up:
a fan and flash of sable.
She too, is focused and hungry
biting at everything.
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After the Storm
the river is insistent
white waves
whisper with the wind
& in corrugated succession
wash, wash, wash the shoreline.
Later, there will be the glint of
treasure exposed on stirred up sand:
pale, glass gems or sharp ebony teeth.
But also, storm smoothed rock,
the weight of which will feel just right
cupped, egg to nest, in the palm of a hand.
Snowglobe, Unshaken
A gray mist obscures the river
trapping us in a snow globe, unshaken
the uneventful before.
Fog lights reflect back the fact that
it’s a school day & my school kids
are driving themselves these days.
I want to keep us all inside the snow globe
unshaken
but the sky lightens
& any minute will reveal
not glass but
very thin air.
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Playing Hooky by Great Falls
Skipping school, sun at our backs
Car packed, music screaming
Cranked down windows
Headed for the falls
First day of Spring—feels like Summer
Siren song
Let’s jump rocks by the Falls!
Falls pumping roar
matching bass in our brains
Gamboling
the Billy Goat Trail
Alive! Alive!
Us against Death
Feel the Spring!
Sun on our face!
And yes, too, the reminder
that we can die
But look!
Not today
Not today!
Dear Chestnut Oak
Do not dive into the river just yet
I need the flickers in your hair
one more season. I’m greedy
for eagles. Their bait and tease
hooking mates with stick or fish.
See how the wind blows warmer,
the morning’s light a welcome peak-a-boo?
Soon the ospreys will move in. You,
judge and jury. Also, the prize.
Nothing is fair. Let me stay rooted
with you a little longer.
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Jenna Villforth Veazey © 2022
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Jenna Villforth Veazey writes from the tidal shores of Virginia. Her poetry has been published in The Fredericksburg Literary and Arts Review and is forthcoming in the Poetry Society of Virginia Centennial Anthology. She is the author of a chapbook of poems, The Rise of Jennifer and her poems for children have appeared in Baby Bug Magazine and Highlights High Five.