Sample Poems by Meredith Davies Hadaway

Skate

The wind backs down and the river knocks
at our hull. What? I ask. Two
black fins, the stolen rig and bait, a sudden
absence beneath us. Skate, you say.

A second summer of drought has choked
the tide with salt and stained the surface
with this sweep of dark green shadow.
There will be no fishing.

You reel in the weightless
filament. I return to my book. Below,
the skate balloon the bottom as they grope
the mud for buried crab.

Silent, except the hum of another boat
passing, we sway in a remnant of wake.

Blackberries

“I’ll see you when I see you,” you used to say.
I always thought you assumed too much.

I buried her beneath a tangle of blackberries
out where she’d licked at her frozen bowl.

Your voice dissolved over the phone.
A first taste of silence.

The Visible Spectrum

Light flashes behind black film
and a screen leaps to life—

or death—where fog and shadow dance
like moths around your heart.

A picture’s worth a thousand words—
but just the one that counts—inoperable.

The light flicks off with a solid click.
There is no news in this transparency.

Only the world passing
through us, only the fluttering

of particle and wave.