Two Poems

Loon Mother

She moves through time and place without hint of physical effort.
Her neck is sensuous in its turning.

Rises on the surface, wings beating silently, near meeting in prayer.
Calls to her children lost over centuries.

She dives.

Her wail reaches down.

Feverfew by Rose Adams

Feverfew by Rose Adams

 

Fish and Feverfew

Recalling Rose Adam’s art.

I remember a bird-beaked fish.
Crowfish?

Lying long and prone on a slab of canvas.
Sleek length of flesh, pink blush.
Or blue?

Head side-lying to the left.
One eye flash frozen.
Pastel? Watercolour?

With an elegant twist
she is looking back with half her vision,
looking for the pearls of her offspring.
They have dispersed;
perhaps never existed.
Would I recognize mine? Was there a daughter?

I remember
scales flaking off my skin
floating away like drowning fireflies.
Sometimes the waves are restless
and I glimpse light
reflected off particles of my life.

Fish by Rose Adams

Fish by Rose Adams

About Mary Ellen Sullivan

Mary Ellen Sullivan grew up on a farm outside Guelph, Ontario, and now lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her poetry and prose publications include The Canadian Journal of Occupational Therapy, Leaf Press, The Canadian Messenger of the Sacred Heart, All Rights Reserved, Rhubarb, The Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada, Rural Delivery Magazine and the anthologies A Quiet Bashful Man: Remembering Malcolm and In the Company of Animals: Extraordinary Encounters with Animals (Nimbus, 2014). She is a regular contributor to Open Heart Forgery and is included in Open Heart Forgery: Year One Anthology. She has compiled four issues of Open Heart Farming, an annual collection of farm and food-centric poems by Nova Scotia poets. Mary Ellen won the 2012 Elora Writers Festival writing competition for poetry and the 2014 Atlantic Writing Competition for poetry.

About Rose Adams

Rose Adams is a visual artist, educator and poet who teaches in the Foundation Department of NSCAD University in Halifax. Her 25-year-visual art retrospective, Birds, Bones and Brains, was exhibited at Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery from January-March, 2014. Her poems have been published in numerous journals including Grain, Prism International and the The Antigonish Review. Rose lives in Dartmouth with her two teenage children, her dog and her parrot.

One thought on “Two Poems

  1. Sharon Goodier

    Beautiful poems

    Reply

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