READING BY THE BROOK Justin McEachron
Looking at the Winslow Homer Of the ten-year-old girl In the cotton, country dress, I felt like I was disturbing her. I didn’t want to make a sound, Or draw too close to the oil paints And puncture her solitude, Sitting by the brook.
Or a daydreamer-like me. And she came to the brook To get away from a world wound tight With dinner table decrees And delicate matters of etiquette. Maybe she was reading some adventures, Huck Finn, or Treasure Island, Or my favorite, Les Miserables.
She felt elusive with her head hung low, auburn hair tied back in red ribbons, her face hidden behind the curtain of the canvas.
For a moment I felt myself dropping Into her antique skin, Her ponytail and white flower dress, And I sat there with my back to the world In the grass greens and the golden water, The warm brushstrokes with no memory, Forgotten in the fleeting solitude, Away from cell phone towers and spinning satellites, Cluttering a celestial night that no longer sings of mystery.
I thought about her book, which resembled a gold-leaf King James Bible, and I wondered if she were the sort of girl that attended the Sunday morning service in a tiny chapel filled with dust and cobwebs, ten miles from the farm where she lived and prayed every night, the same solemn prayer about God taking her soul if she died But maybe not. She could be a free spirit, a tomboy,
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