Passing the Birmingham Bridge
The ugly arch of metal, praying-
mantis green, stretches out
across the chameleon water.
Sunday’s dispute
as futile as the act
of letting go, of raising
this maverick I can-
not tame. you’re making
bad choices, words that lie bull-
ied behind me, sleep
that never comes,
the lead dawn arriving
too soon. Now, the road
I know slips under
the hood as fast as his childhood—me
no longer at the wheel.
When the sky is dense with clouds
and wind, the river
is pea soup, dull
metallic green, bumpy
with softened crackers. When the wind
is slight, it’s glass, still
and tight—plastic sheet
pulled over a mattress. you need
to stop—his want
to be free—the vast plain
of my worries, buzzards
over a dead mouse.
Today, the river
is black burlap, light
from the sky falling
like a sinker.
Pennie Bisbee Walters has been a writer for most of her life and earned her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Carlow University in December 2018. Her essays and poetry have appeared in Full Grown People, Hole in the Head Review, Etched Onyx Magazine, Silver Birch Press, Third Street Review, among others. She’s working on a memoir about parenting a child through addiction, and she and her husband facilitate a support group for people who have lost someone to the disease.