This week’s poem, Meredith Thomas’s “flower slowly, a reminder,” offers us some clarion wisdom about time and our lives. I love this poem’s sweet lyric distillation, its tenderly disarming imagery, and the intimate affection with which it speaks to us.
Thomas is a Maine-based freelance writer. She is the winner of the 2022 Belfast Postmark Poetry Contest, and her work was most recently featured in the spring issue of The Maine Review. She currently resides on the southern coast of Maine with her husband and two children.
Poets, please note that submissions to Deep Water are open through the end of the year. Deep Water is especially eager to share poems by Black writers, writers of color, Indigenous writers, LGBTQ+ writers and other underrepresented voices. You’ll find a link to submit in the credits below.
flower slowly, a reminder
By Meredith Thomas
my love, chin up
it’s simply borrowed earth
we’ll give it back when
we become it
we’re only here the length of a song
warm and mostly blurry
a tangle of pretty limbs &
blue hour heartache
youth escaping us
like bath water from the tub
Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “flower slowly, a reminder,” copyright 2023 by Meredith Thomas, appears by permission of the author. Submissions to Deep Water are open now and through the end of the year. For more information, go to mainewriters.org/deep-water.
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