Nancy on deck!
Nancy Bailey Miller:
Nancy Bailey Miller’s poetry has appeared in national publications including Blue Unicorn, Quill & Parchment, Merrimack, A Poetry Anthology, The Crafty Poet and Our Mothers, Our Selves. She has published six books of poetry: Dance Me Along the Path, Before the Dove Returns, Risking Rallentando, Making Strawberry Pies, Hold On, and Tacking Lessons. For thirteen years (1998 to 2001) she wrote feature articles for Town Crossings, a supplement to the Lawrence Eagle Tribune. Growing up in L.I New York, she has a B.A. from Ohio Wesleyan University. After teaching high school and middle school in Reading MA for six years, she and her husband raised three children. Currently Nancy performs regularly with Reading Symphony Orchestra, plays string quartets with friends, races sailboats with her husband in Marblehead MA, and most of all loves visiting her grandchildren in Maine, Colorado and Amsterdam.
Gullfloss Unimpeded Flowing
Iceland’s Golden Waterfall
There’s a log jam on my river,
but I did not fell one tree.
Where is my angry river going?
I hope its mouth spills out to sea.
Whitewater, wide then narrow,
trapping trunks—at turns, bends me.
With angry waters’ churning churl,
my barkless logs turn slippery.
In Iceland’s vast volcanic fields,
no logs to clog their waterfall.
When Norsemen settled here,
they chopped the trees, dismembered all.
Above the bubbling waterfall
in the din of Gullfloss’s roar,
I hear my river logs surge on,
with the power to restore.
Rough Water
Waves of tears
keep welling.
Six foot rollers hammer
a seaweed-strewn sand.
Please ferry me back to shore
not out to sea.
I’m over my head
treading water.
The swash of gravel’s
receding rush, whish as
water retreats to the depths
and then curves
to catch me again–
pound me, pull me.
Exhausted, I stagger
to the old army blanket,
the book, the umbrella
I drink from my thermos.
Strangers with sunglasses
crowd the beach laughing.
I can’t command quiet.
I fret with my ferment.
