Here we are at the end of February, which often feels like winter’s midpoint, and this week’s poem positions us on a bridge between the frozen and the flowing. I love the fluid music of Brian Evans-Jones’s brief lines, and the ephemeral flux of its river’s imagery in shifting blacks, whites and grays.

Evans-Jones is a former poet laureate of Hampshire, United Kingdom, and now lives in South Berwick. He was the poetry winner of the 2017 Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award from Poets & Writers, and he teaches creative writing in southern Maine and seacoast New Hampshire.

Under The Bridge, A River

By Brian Evans-Jones

Late February: the whole of one winter
white on the rocks, and between runs
black water. Gray snow beneath
is translucent, a breath.

In the shallows, black stones
shed ripples. One quivers,
dips, then
raises its head, opens its wings.

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Under The Bridge, A River,” copyright © 2015 by Brian Evans-Jones, appears by permission of the author.