~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Brooke Harries

How to Keep Going in Mississippi

Somewhere shoals of fish

are moving colors in the sea.

Waking at sunrise, the coffee

dropped on the wood floor

like it needed coffee too.

For days I held the door

for souls behind me,

strove for more bloom.

For ways to survive this place

humid and gray. The darkest hour?

I wanted to know everything

about library research.

In the middle of classroom instruction

the librarian said she was also a beekeeper.

I was stunned. She complimented my dress

when I walked in wearing yellow and black.

I said school colors.

But they were bee colors.

The world was swimming in coincidence,

waving to pattern seekers.

Spring returned with a spare key

no one knew was missing, let herself in.

I lost count of every rhododendron

strutting on the road to school.

Brooke Harries’s work has appeared in Arkansas Review, Laurel Review, Salamander, Sixth Finch, The Shore, and elsewhere. She has an MFA from UC Irvine and is a PhD student at the University of Southern Mississippi, where she serves as Associate Editor of Mississippi Review.