Three Poems
by J.M. Medeiros
Fields
The cucumber beetles were back last year
slugs on the potatoes too, and none of my garden staples have done very well of late
Across the way, a new organic farm went to no-till and no-spray. Folks ’round here blame them for the rise in these new invaders. Though nesting ground-birds are back, and pollinators float through the fields, as ribbons of wildflowers rim the fence lines, leaking colour like an old bruise
Everything has its day
There’s a fox den near the henhouse now
but I could do with fewer eggs
and less potato salad, anyways
Widow
They farmed 183 acres.
Before rural electrification, they separated and sold cream for grocery money. They raised beef and four kids on their land. During those blue-sequined spring days, cattle grew fat on new grass while the family picked rocks from the ploughed fields. The work passed quietly, as did the years. When they retired—the year her husband turned 82—the auctioneer came, selling most of the farm’s assets. Six years later, he chose not to linger through the long unmaking, leaving a silence that settled into every corner of her life.
Spring skies are still cornflower blue; wine-black lilacs hang heavy with memories, while orioles and nuthatches watch as she turns the soil in her garden. On some days, she hears echoes of her children’s laughter as they searched in vain for the five-dollar bill their father promised was hidden under one of those stones.
Days will close over her life, and grass will grow on their graves. The land is enough and never looks back. It can't feel the weight of our footsteps, and asks for nothing in return.
Wild
In winter, we feed the deer.
When the snowpack is deep it’s not a kindness, but survival. Especially now that some of the local Mennonites have thinned out the sugar bush behind me. Where once sap buckets hung, plastic tubing threads through the maples like the blue veins of some creature the gods forgot to invent. The deer yard together, unable anymore to follow their own forage trails.
Perhaps I’m house-broken and a bit tame,
but everything feels too civilized. The last wild places seem to lurk just behind the shadows of the human heart. But that wilderness is a dark, uncharted country—there’s scarcely time left to find a trail toward the sun.
At least the deer don’t know the difference.
Maybe it’s enough just to be fed.
BIO: J.M. (John) Medeiros is a part-time writer, poet, and aspiring farmer living near Walters Falls, Ontario, Canada. His work has appeared in newspapers, magazines, and poetry journals including Bulb Culture Collective, Feathertale, BareBack Magazine, and Dead Beats Literary Blog, as well as the anthologies Hearing Voices (2014) and Cantos (2013).