Mary K O'Melveny

Love Nest

As spring’s heart flutters toward summer,
I have fallen hopelessly for two bald eagles
who sit atop tall dead pine trees
scanning our reservoir’s dinner menu
for their nesting babes. They calculate
the weight of prey while the hour darkens.
My schoolgirl crush extends to their nest
which fits just so below the crown
of the tallest white pine marking
the far line of our property.
Their cone-shaped aerie looks delicate
only to visitors stranded on ground.

I am a fool for once unruly branches
now woven and knotted like an heirloom
crazy quilt, innards softened by moss
and grass and cornstalks, embraced
by fallen feathers and stray down.
I am in awe of the way the pair
have built this together, bonding like
decorators over each stick, string and twig.
I am awed by each year’s remodeling,
how it displays a visual scrapbook
of each chick who hatched here,
fledged, branched and launched.

I adore how each parent warms the egg,
shares the hunt, tears apart the food,
protects the brood, teaches wind drift,
starscapes, flight patterns.
Most of all, I am mad for their passion –
how they return each season, faithful
and filled with ardor, how they plunge,
dive, swoop, cartwheeling
erotica as new now as in their
earliest days, as if they did not know
the dangers winter portends.
As if happy endings are routine.

   ….From An Apple In Her Hand (Codhill Press 2019)


The Fifth Dimension

                       A There is a crack in everything.
                       That’s how the light gets in.

                       …Leonard Cohen

As I was talking to my friend, he broke
down in tears, recalling anew, that his
wife had recently died. Is gone. Today,
some telemarketer asked to speak to
my long dead mother. For one tiny tick
of a clock, I almost handed her the phone.

How do we navigate shape-shifting grief
and still make coffee in the morning,
exchange words with neighbors about the
sorry state of our televised world or look out
our windows to gauge if promised rain
might fade to something akin to mist?

Surely, it is in those split seconds when
memory’s failure blots out bereavement,
when we step forward into some state of
transcendental mercy when yesterday
is restored. A slant of sunlight on snow.
Before the unthinkable had time

to be thought. Before we had to
don mourning garments or speak in past
tenses. Our ground solidifies.
A conversation continues. A smile
returns. We want to stay there,
liberated from known dimensions.

   ….From Dispatches From the Memory Care Museum (Kelsay Books 2021)


Perseid Meteor Showers

Sitting on the porch deck
in obscure night darkness,
I am searching the sky
for signs of shooting stars,

while thinking of deep sea
burials. Perseus,
grandson of Zeus,
adrift, floating to Seriphos.

Mother and son released,
dark oracle prophesies
submerged, the hero god’s
trajectories begin.

Gorgon, sea monsters slain.
Pegasus born of their blood.
Andromeda rescued.
Athena victorious.

Yet, despite all, rescue
proves inadequate. He
cannot be saved from fate.
His great star flares, then falls.

   ….From Merging Star Hypotheses (Finishing Line Press 2020)


About the Author

Mary K O’Melveny, a Pushcart Prize nominee and award-winning poet, is the author of four poetry collections: A Woman of a Certain Age, Merging Star Hypotheses (Finishing Line Press 2018, 2020), Dispatches From the Memory Care Museum and Flight Patterns (Kelsay Books 2021, 2023). Flight Patterns has been praised as a “beautiful, courageous, truthful book” that is “filled with “fierce, tender, political and melodious” poems. Mary’s poetry has appeared in numerous print and on-line journals, anthologies and national blog sites, including Minerva Rising, Voice of Eve, FLARE: The Flagler Review, Split Rock Review, Allegro Poetry Journal, Anthology Magazine, Slippery Elm Literary Journal, Lightwood, The Poet’s Billow and The New Verse News. Her book Merging Star Hypotheses was a semi-finalist for the 2019 Washington Prize sponsored by The Word Works. Mary is a member of The Hudson Valley Women’s Writers Group and a co-author of their anthologies An Apple In Her Hand (Codhill Press 2019) and Rethinking The Ground Rules (Mediacs Press 2022). Her web site is www.marykomelvenypoet.com.

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