[Poetry] Two Poems by V. Bray

The Moment When My Brain Realizes We Are Part of Something Bigger

I bend to pick up half a translucent

plastic milk bottle buried

in the damp sand.

At the juncture where the jug

handle turns in on itself

cracked and split,

limpets cling,

their sunset shells etched in brown and orange,

their fleshy bodies a spot of yellow so

unlike my form or

this rigid sheet they cling to.

Shiny and slick, limpet after limpet,

tiny newborns pile on top of matriarchs.

I turn the piece back over,

place it alongside the incoming tide,

bury it beneath the sand.

The Raritan River

your ice floes are not

the crystalline blue of Antarctic waters

not frothy wisps

of frozen seafoam

instead

your ice rests

on muddy banks

captured moments of tidal surge

then breaks away

floats back into

the sapphire green

of the Atlantic

V. Bray has been a writer since childhood and still has a box filled with her first “books,” usually illustrated with markers and bound with yarn. She writes in many genres, from speculative and historical fiction to poetry. Her work has been published in About Place Journal, Halfway Down the Stairs, Multiplicity Magazine, and The Writer. Learn more at authorvbray.com.