Sample Poems by Meredith Davies Hadaway

White Ribbon

Two white tails of ribbon dance
from the rail of the bridge

where the boy went
over. No one knows why. Not

the girl who decided to come
on a late-night ramble, not

the friend to tried to hold him up
in the moon-split current.

As I run across the bridge each mooring, I reach
to take a long white arm of ribbon, to wrap

the wind around my wrist before I shake it off
and let it wave me by.

Sacred Spaces

This chair that curves its arms around me.

The cover of a paperback that yawns above its opening page.

The furnace rumbles on.

Between the cat and the window, a stretch of carpet that
muffles jungle heart.

Between you and me, the din of wondering.

The days that close the gap.

Let nothing—let all this—come
between us.

Afterthought

Like the ringing after cadence
when the bow lifts off the violin

and the room holds one last
breath of spruce and rosin—

silence makes its own music, louder
than the brush of fingertips, a sudden swell.

“Longing,” in its origin means “to make long.”

Turn out the light, and let us see
if we can stretch the dark until the morning din of

bird call and traffic fails
to wake us.