Poems by Nancy Meddings

Like shards of a broken rainbow

They arch between neatly combed rows,

Dreams and faces shadowed

By hats pulled low and scarves pulled high.

Gloved hands search for hidden treasure,

Heap the flats (with aching bodies)

Full of red hunger.

Trays held shoulder-high, they move

With the painful grace of women in labor,

Heavy with fruit.

The old flatbed truck watches silently 

As they slowly lose the race

To pull more from the earth

Than it will pull from them.

Copyright © Nancy Meddings 

All rights reserved

2004

Warm honey sun outlines your fireplug frame,

Cinnamon skin stretched over six years’ worth

Of wonder and worry, reckless as the waves

Crashing into spray around your waist.

The lifeguard comes by to warn us—riptides;

Stay close, come in, stand here, he says.

You smile at me, sand-coated pilgrim, then turn

Back to embrace the endless dangers.

Sharks, rocks, riptides, stinging fish—

Sharp claws, like the ones around my heart

When fear for you turns mother love

Into breathless razor pain.

I can’t predict what lies beneath,

Control what wants to pull you down;

There will always be riptides,

As you move further out to sea.

Never fight a riptide, my son—

Swim slow, balanced and steady,

Stay parallel to the shore, and

Keep your eyes on the horizon.

Remember, you swam before you walked,

First inside me, then next to me.

It is good to have a lifeguard,

Better to be a strong swimmer.

Copyright © Nancy Meddings

All Rights Reserved

2002

My Mother’s Father’s Mother’s

White name was Eliza.

b. 1854 in Huntland, Tennessee

An aunt showed me her picture once—

‘That’s the squaw’, then tossed the 

Faded sepia rectangle back into 

The old pictures box, and left.

I fished it out and met her gaze,

Midnight eyes in a leather face.

Small, stiff, solemn, staring stunned

Across a hundred years

At her ghost-white, blue-eyed legacy.

I feel her watching still,

On the long, starless nights

When I walk my own Trail of Tears,

And try to guess

The true name given to

My Mother’s Father’s Mother.

Copyright © Nancy Meddings

All rights reserved

2006

Oak leaves cut bare feet like steak knives.

A slick carpet of acorns turns the grass brown.

Arthritic branches grasp at the power lines,

And emptiness grows in the shade.

“I’ll pay half,” my neighbor says,

“If you’ll cut the damn thing down.”

She is weary of fighting its dark embrace,

Watching her daffodils bow their heads in defeat.

Does she hear the scrub jays scream for joy

When they swoop into that mossy harbor?

Or see the blue swing twist gently below,

Dreaming of a blonde girl on a summer day?

From my angle, it touches the sun,

Whispers sacred music in the wind.

It is a cathedral guarding ancient secrets,

Awakening the Druid in my heart.

Copyright © Nancy Meddings

All Rights Reserved

2003