Poetry by Michele Sharpe

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Brother, By a Factor of Ten

The signs are available all week: firewood arrayed 
                               just so at the hidden campsite
the three otters frolicking like your daughters in the river
                               the freight train’s nighttime moan.

Just so, moss drapes and veils the hidden campsite.
                               Both warning and heart-wail,
the freight train’s nighttime moan fades.
                                Next day, I’m pumping gas when I see,

like a warning and heart-wail, the young man
                                with a backpack riding high, 
clomping past the people pumping gas, 
                                boots half-laced, heading out

like you did, your pack riding high 
                                and your spirit, too, believing in fresh starts. 
Loose shoelaces heading out -- he’s your type, brother,
                                and you are multiplied by memory,

your spirit, your believing, your desire, your leaving.
                                Your presence is available all week, arranged.





​Elegy for Austin

Born magnetized, sensing what lay behind him
and which roads led to water, then memorizing 
streets and buildings at three years old,

stopped at a traffic light, crowing “And that’s the way 
to River Street,” and born for water, diving head 
first from the limestone outcropping at four years old 

when the springs welled up freely and flooded 
the swimming holes, before the great drought that drew 
the aquifer down, and born contrary, at five years old,

despising reading with the conviction
of one who had it thrust on him by strangers, 
and not his mother, who I loved, who was a child

I cradled once, who relinquished him, at six years old, 
to a good family when she couldn’t piss clean enough 
to keep him, and that was still before the springs

dried up, and he was born fearless, our lineage 
both gift and curse, so was he born stamped 
with the arc he carved in air when the ATV 

he’d mastered backflipped and his neck snapped? 
At thirteen years old. He is not coming back. The springs 
are coming back. Again, the floods drench everything.
​

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Michele Sharpe, a poet and essayist, is also a high school dropout, hepatitis C survivor, adoptee, and former trial attorney. Her essays appear in venues including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Poets & Writers. Poems are recently published or forthcoming in Sweet, The Mom Egg Review, Rogue Agent, and Salamander. She lives in North Florida.

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