Brady Kamphenkel

 
Crossing the Bridge

I saw someone crossing the bridge
and worried it was you. If it were
you would have missed us, here at our fire.

We lit it early so you could find us beneath
our willowy smoke. The wind makes us cry
round our fire, which is new, and needs the wind

it fears will smother it. If that was you I saw crossing
the bridge, your eyes unseeing above that deep drop,
you have missed us: you have gone too far.
   

Two Forms in Love

The blue snow catches
The falling orange light which had
Been hopeless.

The blue catches fire thus
And the orange is quenched
And takes a steady shape.

In time, the light will admit
It is not
Really orange.

And the snow
Will let the steady blue shape it’d taken
Fall away.

It will be a close night in spring. By then
They will have both already vanished
Each stepping carefully into the other.
   

Brady Thomas Kamphenkel lives in Duluth, Minnesota, where he teaches at The College of St. Scholastica and Lake Superior College. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Crab Fat, The Freshwater Review, SLANT, and elsewhere. He has an MFA from the Stonecoast in Maine.