The Light, the Bridge, and the Fish
- The Light, the Bridge, and the Fish
Kathleen M. Kelley, Poetry, childhood, selfhood
When my mother asked me what in the world I wanted, we were driving across the Sagamore Bridge.
I could feel the vibration. I was ten. My mother had never raised her voice before.
Now she wanted an answer. I couldn’t imagine what it was. Oh, there were things I wanted,
things I wanted to know — what lit the sun, for example, and what lay beyond the vast blue bowl of the sky,
what would happen if the trembling bridge snapped in two before we got across, what would
my father say? Most of all, I wanted us to be more holy, but what did I know about holiness?
Years later, after I turned the crank on my childhood’s jack-in-the-box and let the scary clown fly out,
I learned what I really wanted: I wanted to be the light, and the bridge, and even the fish
who swam beneath the bridge, the one who was caught, and the one who was eaten. [End Page 268]
Currently residing in Florence, MA, kathleen m. kelley has received an Anderbo Poetry Prize and a Philbrick Poetry Award for her chapbook The Waiting Room. Her poetry has appeared in Chautauqua, Theodate, Mobius, Women’s Voices for Change, Persimmon Tree, and the Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine anthology. New work is upcoming in The Healing Muse.
