Over and under, it flows beneath
jagged glass panes, transparent
or opaque, muffled rush of water
over rocks downstream.
A porch, in winter, wraps around the house
like a scarf around a warm throat,
chimes make sonnets of the wind chill,
church bells of sunshine,
content as the green and brown
on birch and evergreen
The red and brown, yellow pebbles
turn blue dark in cold dusk.
among the sheets of snow,
apertures into focus the
constant clear that this moment
will go on to another.
A pane of glass I skim from the surface
thaws in my fingers.
I pick up a rounded stone,
time smoothed over.
I, a mere ornament, will pass through
like this shallow water
and when I am gone,
the brook will babble on
in a thousand different tongues,
over stone and hill.
-Jessica G. Simon
Jessica G. Simon wrote her first poem when she was seven-years-old. After competing on the 2001 D.C. National Youth Poetry Slam Team, she began to perform her poems as well as study, write and edit original work. Her poems have been published in Moment Magazine, Magnolia: A Journal of Women’s Socially Engaged Literature, Vol. II, Edge, Vol. 9 and Stoked Words: An Anthology of Queer Poetry from the Capturing Fire Slam and Summit.