Great Pond Poems by Ed Meek

The Depths of Great Pond by Ed Meek

Review by Laura Cherry

As in the eponymous Great Pond, there is much more going on beneath the surface of Ed Meek’s most recent poetry collection than first meets the eye. What begins as a series of lyrical meditations on nature evolves into a commentary on relationships, longing, grief, missed chances, art, and the fraught political landscape.

Deft nature poems invite readers into the book, introducing us to the poet’s landscape: pond, bay, harbor, and woods.

the sun splits the trees and lifts me with its light

as surely as wings lift a bird.

“June”

The flora and fauna of New England are on brilliant display here, particularly our variety of native birds, from the quotidian (robins, jays) to the breathtaking (herons, goldfinches, ospreys). Meek captures the childlike awe we can feel from a close encounter with, say, a starfish: “Those tiny stems / beneath the arms / are legs!” (“Asteroidea”)

Meek’s poems emit a muted longing: for the past, for beauty, for a better world than the one we’ve made.

Now those few wild horses who are left alone

Seem unaware of what we’ve done.

Yet I can’t help but smile watching them run.

“Mustangs”

From a placid beginning, the collection moves into sometimes-troubled stories of family, youthful hijinks, and terrible losses. One of the collection’s most powerful pieces is the brief “The Death of a Child,” breathtaking in its stark simplicity.

Great Pond is enlivened by wry descriptions of time-honored New England pastimes: walking the dog on a sleety afternoon, being forced off the road by a sudden squall, searching a loved one’s skin for Lyme-carrying ticks, sneezing through pollen season, and, my favorite, trying to cross Mass Ave:

6700 died last year, my wife says

pushing the useless button

at the crosswalk.

“Pedestrian”

In the book’s later poems, Covid lockdown memories piercingly recreate those insular, foggy times, with the virus “[going] room to room / through nursing homes / separating

souls from bodies” [“In the Provinces”]. Several pieces on painters and poets (Warhol, Haring, Ginsberg) comment on the way outsider art reflects aspects of our society that we may not want to see – “faces are masks / the authorities use to identify / enemies of the state” (“Basquiat”). Meditations on our broken political system and embattled neighborhoods express sympathy with those who have been harmed and a deep fear for what we are, collectively, facing.

It’s a great weight

to carry the future

on our backs

like mules.

“The Burden”

“Freedom and the Dignity it Contains” ends the collection by calling on Abraham Lincoln’s example as one we need to heal our divided country: “He stood firm to all assaults / as if already carved in rock.” At a time when “agents must learn to ignore / the crying and screams” of detainees (“Asylum”), and “We always assume / the suspects armed and dangerous” (“Wanted: A Few Good Men”), Meek looks to Lincoln for the “seeds of hope” we need to find our own courage, conviction, and moral center.

Like a true New Englander, Meek’s Great Pond is quiet, with hidden depths, and well worth spending time with.

Great Pond, by Ed Meek. Kelsay Books, 2026 https://www.amazon.com/Great-Pond-Ed-Meek/dp/B0GKVG6TSL