Meg Smith - Three Poems
Content Warning: dark themes, loss, 9/11
The Moon of the End of Blackberry Season
Sept. 11, 2021
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I'm throwing shadows in the orchard,
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in a poverty of light.
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This bodes a night of calm,
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when once was ash -- two decades gone.
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This one true fire,
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through sighing leaves, gives us
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nothing from silence. Not for you, or me,
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or seeds stolen by birds, fleeing
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across a strange new sky.
Quartering
Give me this light, splintered,
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like this body,
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open to the naked earth.
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I have only this remnant of night,
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and it slips from me,
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like a skin that has lived too long.
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Now we are both, exposed, raw,
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to the belly, torn, of night.
The Moon of Missing Cats
When I cannot save them,
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I commend them to its unfailing
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warm in its crescent,
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sure in its orbit --
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and in this place,
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we all walk,
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in the soft tread of
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the path of night.
Meg Smith is a writer, journalist, dancer and events producer living in Lowell, Mass. In addition to previously appearing in Acropolis, her poetry has appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, The Cafe Review, Poetry Bay, Belliveau Review, and many more. She is author of five poetry books and a short fiction collection, The Plague Confessor. She welcomes visits to megsmithwriter.com.
Photograph: Morning Moon Cat by Janet Olearski
Janet Olearski is a writer, based in Central Portugal.