From the Editor: Delmarva Review joins with Spy and poets from across the land to celebrate April as National Poetry Month. Spy will highlight one new poem each week in April with commentary from the poet or Delmarva Review editors especially for Spy’s discerning readers. The Review’s editors read 2,500 to 3,000 poetry submissions a year. The best 50 to 70 are selected for publication in the annual literary journal.
Author’s Note: This poem was inspired by the wind-filled sail of “Broad Reach,” a beautiful sculpture in Chestertown’s Wilmer Park. The title quote is meant to refer to sailing but spoke to me of another magnificent craft with a different sort of broad reach: poetry. – Meredith Davies Hadaway
“On a Broad Reach
They Are Magnificent Craft”
(for Alex Castro)
Every poem begins as a blink
in the sky, a slight turn of the
earth. It stretches the length of the
sun to where a cardinal perches, chipping
away at the morning. It gathers the leaves,
arranging them in riddles of rust and
gold, rubs each stone in its path.
Now it is midday and centuries lie
behind us, a litter of bones and
promise beneath the slurry of sand as we
stroll to the river.
Every poem is a long walk, the resurrection
of all the meters that brought us here, past
windows ablaze with sun. Every hand that
twirled a brush or twisted a knot to tether
us to something that lives on wind, bellows
in the breath of the water.
_____
Meredith Davies Hadaway was selected as the Featured Writer in the 12th annual edition of the Delmarva Review. She is the author of three poetry collections: Fishing Secrets of the Dead, The River is a Reason, and At The Narrows (winner of the 2015 Delmarva Book Prize for Creative Writing). She holds an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Hadaway is a former Rose O’Neill Writer-in-Residence who previously served as chief marketing officer for Washington College, in Chestertown, Maryland.
The Delmarva Review publishes the best of original new poetry, short stories, and creative nonfiction selected from thousands of submissions annually. The independent literary journal is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit supported by individual tax-free contributions and a grant from the Talbot County Arts Council with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Print and digital editions are available from Amazon and local bookstores. Website: DelmarvaReview.org.
