Three Portraits

Tony Reevy 

The curve in the road
is gentle, like swells
on the sea.

The town is tired,
too large since water-
wheels stilled, looms
stopped weaving, yarn
mills ceased to spin.

At roadside, shed wall
with three portraits of Jesus—
at the left, wearing a cloak,
walking the paths;
on the right, by God’s side.

And, in the center,
waist-view, naked,
hands raised waiting
for the spikes.

A flash by, the scene
is gone—then
rivers, mountains,
the journey home.

Tony Reevy has more than one hundred publications including poems in Asheville Poetry Review, Now & Then, Out of Line, Pembroke Magazine, The Kerf, other journals, ten anthologies and four chapbooks: Green Cove Stop, Magdalena, Lightning in Wartime and In Mountain Lion Country. His works also include non-fiction articles, short stories, and two non-fiction books. He is senior associate director of the Institute for the Environment at UNC-Chapel Hill in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.