V E R S E and I M A G E

Standing at our friend’s threshold,

pockets padded with tissues,

we steel ourselves for heartache,

prepare to embrace longer than usual,

voice our true affections,

stutter through farewells.

To our surprise, she rallies,

rises from her sick bed,

responds to the attention,

the memories, the bonds we share.

Glancing back as we leave,

we see her waving from the doorway.

Later, we knock at the door of a cousin

recovering from a cardiac procedure.

She claims to feel ten years younger.

We fill this bonus time with laughter

and celebrate the lightness of reprieve.

Arriving home, we cringe to find

ruffled remains of a red-bellied

woodpecker, feathery outline still visible

on our glass door.

We gather its hollow form,

place it tenderly, respectfully,

in a shallow hole, hallowing

the fragility of life

at our own doorstep.

from The Lightness of Reprieve, Finishing Line Press, Georgetown, KY; © 2024

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Feb 20, early morning drive: slant light across the fields sets fire to every third tree along the highway. Dark orange, deep red, their crowns glow, a bright haze of flowers at the tips of a million twigs. Almost Spring, and the first maples are blooming.

Witch hazel has dropped her petals, spent; now maple lifts the baton. Here in the Southeastern USA, maple is one of the earliest trees to bloom. Blossom bud break is triggered in mid-February, primarily by lengthening daylight regardless of weather, weeks before the leaf buds swell and burst. Check the pollen burn in your eyes and nose – you’ll know when those flowers have opened.

As opposed to most garden flowers which present both pistil and stamen in the same bloom (namely bisexual), maple is, like many trees, monoecious – there are separate male flowers and female flowers on the same tree, even on the same stem. Male red maple flowers look like little ruby crowns of spiky stamens; the female flowers are a bouquet of drooping red pistils.

But it gets trickier. Some red maples bear only male flowers, while others bear only female (this separation termed dioecious). And individual trees can shift. One year a tree may be male, the next year half and half, the following year all female. The prevalence of Male vs. Female flowers doesn’t seem to be either a cause or an effect of the overall health of the tree. Why?! Why do they do this? What purpose does all this variability serve the tree or the community of red maples?

I don’t know but the tree knows. Perhaps it’s communicating with all its neighbor maples through its underground network of mycorrhizal fungus, collaborating to decide who’s going to make lots of pollen this year and who’ll make the seeds (and maples do make lots of those little winged seeds). Perhaps their network extends throughout the local woodland and into the next county. Acer rubrum is one of the most plentiful trees east of the Mississippi, from Newfoundland to Florida. Perhaps it creates one vast collective knowing, guiding the roots, the bole, the twigs that will bud into flowers, male or female. Perhaps.

February into March, every morning the scarlet halo expands. Every day we’re closer to Spring. Every afternoon more sneezes and water from my eyes. Glorious! I trust those maple trees utterly – they certainly know what they’re doing.

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Sliding into a booth,

leather cool to my legs,

we take menus in hand;

we glance around,

tempted by lavish meals

rising before other patrons.

An adjacent mirrored wall

makes the tavern seem

twice its size, twice as lively.

Across smooth Formica,

you sip ice water,

watching as your doppleganger

tucks a wayward wisp of hair

into her head-scarf.

We toast to what’s possible,

to friendship, regardless.

Condensation drips from our tumblers,

while frost still clings to those

of our glassy companions.

from The Lightness of Reprieve, Finishing Line Press, Georgetown, KY; © 2024

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There is, after all, no reprieve. This morning as we’re talking to the palliative care nurse who is  interviewing my mother, my father asks, “Does everyone end up in Hospice?” Or did he say, “Will I end up in Hospice?” It’s a fair question, even for someone not 97 years old. Every year that passes, Dad announces he’s planning to live five more years. One may hope, but perhaps one shouldn’t plan on it.

The title poem in this first collection by Marilyn Hedgpeth, The Lightness of Reprieve, confronts this reality. Marilyn’s friend will die of cancer very soon and yet the two of them are surprised to share a vibrant afternoon together; Marilyn’s cousin might have died from her heart condition but now feels reborn; Marilyn returns home to confront the death of a beautiful bird on her own doorstep. Other poems throughout the book touch upon our mortality from many different angles, sometimes head on, sometimes in metaphor and with the lightest touch of benediction. I sense a deep abiding theme of sharing. We rarely share with each other this common knowledge that our lives will most definitely end; what we do share is stories and a gift of ripe strawberries; imagination and laughter; silent moments of togetherness; prayer.

And in sharing don’t we experience reprieve? These are not poems of grief for time lost. These are poems of celebration for time shared. Marilyn has no doubt sat with the bereaved many, many times in her years as a minister, but this is not a book of counsel. These are simply poems of our simple human commonality. I step into the poems and accept my own sadness – sadness lifts as it is borne by many other shoulders. The yoke is not removed from me, but for a few steps along this journey I might almost imagine its lightness.

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Marilyn Hedgpeth recently retired as a Presbyterian (USA) Minister of Word and Sacrament after 24 years of “preaching / teaching / leading / loving life.” The Lightness of Reprieve is available from Finishing Line Press HERE

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One Final Rusty Leaf

clings to the dogwood tree

outside our bedroom window.

Resisting the wind’s wrestling,

it beckons me back to a time

when I painted a single leaf

on our patio wall:

my Hail Mary attempt

to prolong the life of my father

as modern medicine failed,

as the leaves fell.

Desperate to bring him hope;

venturing outside the boundaries

of my own knowledge and faith,

I scheduled an appointment

with a local healer, Chief Two Trees.

But when travel became impossible,

I resorted to that lone leaf

and a no holds barred prayer.

After he died, I continued to paint,

self-medicating stroke by stroke,

adding to my winter wall-garden:

fern, forget-me-not, bleeding heart,

wisteria, live-for-ever;

each new leaf, petal, blossom,

balm to my wound.

from The Lightness of Reprieve, Finishing Line Press, Georgetown, KY; © 2024

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