Tag: Meg Freer

Four Poems by Meg Freer

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We Can Always Tell a Longer Story

Long-dead aloe and jade plants
remain on a window sill
like intricately carved sculptures,
more interesting than the dullness
of frosted window film upstairs.
The building’s immune system
doesn’t seem to be working well.

I have not seen the occupant
for weeks, have not smelled
the cannabis when I walk by,
although certain lights stay on
around the clock. Skipped town
for a while, perhaps, but no one
knows where to look or who to call.

I collect the tomatoes at least, before
the vines fall over from the weight.
An abundance of milkweed pods
and ‘kiss me over the garden gate’ flowers
dangle with green and magenta exuberance
over the barren driveway. Those plants thrive.
They don’t care if anyone lives there or not.

*

Watcher

Winter evenings, she watches
snow-covered rooftops, the factory’s white exterior,
and even the limestone walls of the historic church
turn lavender briefly at sunset.

Distorted nighttime sleep allows her to see
stranger things from her high apartment windows.
The man who stands on a bus stop bench,
rocks it back and forth while he entwines
willow branches into a large wreath for his head.

She keeps an eye on the tiny house that sold
but that no one moved into, watches for squatters.
Mostly she hopes for better sleep, or at least
that someday she will see something useful
like the man wanted for assaulting a woman
in the nearby park, or find out who does things like
pull up all the garlic in the community garden at night.

*

Tea Party

After the drama and mild trauma
of visiting the hospital’s locked ward
for the first time, entering the bare room
with neither table nor chair, where my friend
must subsist until her world stops turning on her,
I seek refuge with my neighbours,
my heart in need of a bath to wash away
all I saw and heard. We talk in their kitchen
with cups of ‘Irish tea’—whiskey,
in their house—because they say
I’m too pale. The ‘tea’ slows my heart rate,
and I gently close the door on that day
before it bangs shut.

*

Small, Weird Things
         in memoriam Bob M, poet

Breath combs the sides of my body,
clean lines of limbs between panes of glass.
Ginger and fig consort at the tip of my tongue.
I enter a secret room through the hole
in my pants pocket, discover bowls of silver coins.
Mountains lie down in submission at my feet.

Did I dream such things, or did you
send these images from the other side?
We wish you could see our celebration
of your life, then you enter the room
in the body of a squirrel—right on cue,
after a mention of “small, weird things,”
and we all cheer to know you made it.

Next morning at the bakery, a sign reads
Yesterday $3. Yes, I will take yesterday
for $3 if it means you will return again,
one more time. You always managed
to right yourself after falls of many kinds.
But even a squirrel will have one last fall.

*

Meg Freer teaches piano and writes poetry in Ontario. Her photos, short prose and poems have appeared in various North American anthologies and journals, and she has written two chapbooks of poems. She holds a Graduate Certificate in Creative Writing with Distinction from Toronto’s Humber School of Writers.

Difficult Times by Meg Freer

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Difficult Times

“No! NO! Absolutely not!” the older man in front of me
yells at the grocery clerk when she asks him
if he wants to donate $2 to our local Food Bank,

such anger first thing in the morning,
and he’s just infused the clerk’s day and mine
with whatever bitter sauce his life has sunk into,

he doesn’t know that another man the day before
had told the clerk she wasn’t worth her hourly wage,
and she had to tell him, “The door is right over there,”

he doesn’t know she might have to make use
of the Food Bank herself, with her husband off work
long-term from an injury, and food prices rising,

with her elderly parents over a thousand miles away
who might need her to take time off work
to travel there to help them.

Would it make a difference if he knew?

*

Meg Freer grew up in Montana and now teaches piano in Kingston, Ontario, where she enjoys the outdoors year-round. Her prose, photos, and poems have won awards in North America and overseas and have been published in journals such as Ruminate, Juniper Poetry, Vallum Contemporary Poetry, Arc Poetry, Eastern Iowa Review, and Borrowed Solace.

Three Poems by Meg Freer

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Grief Has a Name

A full ten minutes at sunset, hundreds
of crows fly south over the woods.
Moments after the last one,
snow blows in from the north.

I follow sheep trails across the fields,
unwind details I have been avoiding,
mental terrain more suited
for moose than human.

Mom’s two birthday balloons cling
together in her dining room for a day,
before one migrates to the kitchen
and the other moves into her bedroom.

A day later, the bedroom balloon
floats into Dad’s study to stay
just above the books. Dad must be
directing this scene from beyond.

In my dream, he fades into view
in the doorway holding a basketball,
says nothing, watches while I read
on the sofa, then drifts away.

Grief wants me to call it by name,
knows all 360 joints in my body,
tapes their seams to keep itself
from floating into oblivion.

*

All the Sounds of Summer

As gently as he once held a fledgling blue jay,
he cradles his sister’s arm, traces each of the thin,
horizontal lines he never knew were there,
saddened by scars not yet faded to white.

All the sounds of summer vanish
as he enters into her night and wonders at the fluency
of hands that treat the body in such disparate ways.
How to fathom the plight of molecules gone awry?

Ever distressed at the sight of his own blood,
though he understands artery over vein, he can’t
understand pain that calls out for more pain and hopes
his sister will fly, as the fledgling he buried never did.

*

New Mother
        for Mary P. and Minnow

I offer to walk with her on the nearby trail,
get her out of the house for a while.
We greet Archie and Jughead, the goats
with curly horns, as we pass their pen.
I pick up a guinea hen feather to bring home.
She sets a brisk pace as we leave the farm.
It hasn’t hit her yet, this unexpected freedom.

She stops short, as if she’s seen an apparition.
A cow stares at us through the brush.
What are you doing way over here by the fence?
Shouldn’t you be over with the horses?
This moody cow moves around the horse pasture
every day, rarely spends time with the other cows,
sometimes goes off by herself to figure things out.

We leave the cow to her moping, resume walking,
then she stops, looks back down the trail.
Wait. Am I even supposed to leave the farm?
I have babies back there, you know.
I reassure her that it’s fine to take a break,
she nursed her puppies, she needs fresh air.
She catches a whiff of spring and trots off.

The robins and redwing blackbirds are singing,
the stream is flowing, the spring scents
keep enticing, we continue our walk.
A bit further and she stops again, looks back
the way we’ve come, looks up at me.
Are you sure I was supposed to leave?
My puppies might need me, you know.

I try to persuade her to keep walking,
but no luck. We turn back, the cow
is still at the fence, but she doesn’t notice,
she is so excited to return to her seven pups—
lick them all over, move them around
with her paws and nose so they all
get a turn to nurse—be a good mother.

*

Meg Freer grew up in Montana and now teaches piano in Kingston, Ontario, where she enjoys the outdoors year-round. Her prose, photos, and poems have won awards in North America and overseas and have been published in journals such as Ruminate, Juniper Poetry, Vallum Contemporary Poetry, Arc Poetry, Eastern Iowa Review, and Borrowed Solace.