Meg Freer grew up in Montana and lives in Ontario. Her award-winning photos and poems have appeared in anthologies and journals including NatureWriting, Mothers Always Write, Young Ravens Literary Review, Eastern Iowa Review  and Rat’s Ass Review. Recently, she won a fellowship and attended the Summer Literary Seminars in Tbilisi.

INTERWOVEN

Meg Freer

A lost hen walked down

our city driveway this morning,

headed for a better spot

in the pecking order, or perhaps

someone’s evening soup.

The drumbeat in the song

on the car radio sounded

exactly like the turn signal,

or the hen’s tapping feet,

and I tried in vain to turn it off.

I received news of my mother:

“The toe that was bothering her

has been taken care of. When your feet

hurt, you hurt all over, so now she will

stand and sleep in comfort:  Huzzah!”

When my daughter was young,

she used to write things on small

pieces of paper, random phrases

such as “ask the corn foot club”

or “the boot cracks in sore fury”.

Take me on a tour of the generations,

weave straight lines into curves, let me feel

the ache of evolution. Where words

leave off, what begins? My hands feel

the motions, braid invisible hair.