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Cherish the Light – Marilyn Hedgpeth

Posted in Imagery, tagged Alenda Lux, family, imagery, Marilyn Turner Hedgpeth, nature photography, NC Poets, poetry, Southern writing on June 5, 2026| 6 Comments »

[ with 3 poems by Marilyn Hedgpeth ]

The Cross and the Carpenter Bees

They haul the worn wooden cross

from the depths of the church,

into the light of the sanctuary,

to make ready for its days

of Lenten pageantry, draped in purple.

It’s oddly riddled with holes, I notice,

as if shot through, front and back,

which no one recalls from last year

when it was confined to the basement

soon after Easter.

So, I stay watchful, keep my eyes open

while voicing prayers of penitence,

confessions of mortality,

while each person’s forehead is marked

with a dirty smudge of ash

as the organ drones.

Amidst this solemn ritual,

one by one they begin to emerge:

hibernating carpenter bees

rising lazily like sleepers waking

from tombs bored deep

into the marrow of the wood,

to stretch cramped wings.

Marilyn Turner Hedgpeth

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Crows Playing in the Snow

The first snowfall in 1,038 days,

barely a dusting, a sifting,

like powdered sugar on a cake.

The postman drives boldly, undeterred,

yet walks gingerly over crunchy grass,

carefully up slippery steps

to deliver a handful of cards,

catalogues, and holiday chachka.

In a vacant lot down the way,

crows are playing in the snow.

Nose up, flaps down, they skid to a halt,

rattling as they touch down awkwardly,

black on white.

An elderly driver ventures out slowly,

unable to discern between

salt, slag, and black ice.

He creeps and swerves,

brake lights casting red reflections.

Meanwhile, crows are playing in the snow,

arching their mighty wings,

they laugh out loud as they make dark

snow angels with their shadows,

black on white.

A passing car speeds up,

tossing its top-knot of snow,

blizzarding those in its wake.

Nearby, crows are playing in the snow,

hopscotching on crows’ feet to create

hatched patterns on a blank canvas.

They caw to their friends

to come out and joint them.

I scramble to find my boots.

Marilyn Turner Hedgpeth

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Laughter Returns

so surprising

it startles me

our small group playing handbells

flubs a simple song

known by heart since cradle roll

Jesus Loves Me, This I Know

suddenly unrecognizable

causing us all to laugh so hard

we almost drop our bells

This last year

I had forgotten

the contagion of hearing others

chortle just over my shoulder

the catharsis of laughing off

blunders and clangers

the full-bodied posture

of knee-buckling joy

I had forgotten

before fear and grief

the music of communal happiness

Marilyn Turner Hedgpeth

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Last week a friend rang my doorbell to hand me this book, Alenda Lux, Latin for “cherish the light.” As he placed it in my hands, he told me the story of the poems and the poet, Marilyn, a dear family friend for decades, her sudden and unexpected death from an accident. He thought the poetry might speak some special message to me, but he confessed that it has been a hard year for him as well, not only this loss of a friend but also of family members and those he loved. A year of grief and sadness.

And then for a minute my friend and I ponder together the book’s title. What light might we hope to discover here? Is there any promise that out of death we may draw some connection to life? Reading these lines, will we lament or rejoice?

Marilyn had prepared this manuscript before her fatal accident in 2025, and her husband and children have insured that it be published in a beautiful volume, with evocative photography by Diana Greene. As a minister for twenty-four years, Marilyn Hedgpeth certainly must have sojourned in the realms of both hope and despair. Her poems do not feign ignorance of the darkness that can cloud the human soul, but they also never forsake the unceasing and unvanquishable light that desires to lift our spirits every hour, every day. Reading these poems, I am raised up. I am convinced there is a power larger than any pain of my own. Distant sometimes, but always drawing closer, I believe I hear the music of happiness.

✾ ✿ ❁

Marilyn Turner Hedgpeth published her first poetry collection, The Lightness of Reprieve, in 20224, and that same year published a collaboration with her writing group, White Fence. She earned a Master of Divinity from Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia and served as a Presbyterian Minister of Word and Sacrament for twenty-four years, seventeen of them at First Presbyterian Church in Durham, North Carolina. In her author’s notes accompanying the manuscript, she says the poems “coalesced from relationships past and present that have provided light (lux in Latin), strength, resilience, and hope to my life.” Her family, with the publication of the book, added a memoriam, including, “When we read these poems, we sense that Marilyn is still very present.” May it be so.

And in the book’s title poem, Marilyn reveals that her father originally wished for her, his first-born, to be named Alenda Lux.

Alenda Lux is available from Warren Publishing.
The Lightness of Reprieve is featured at Verse and Image HERE

Sessile Bellwort

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Thank you for visiting Verse and Image:

. . . . . every Friday I present one or two poems I’ve read this week that particularly speak to me;

. . . . . on Saturdays I present one or two poems submitted by YOU, my readers.

If you would like to offer a poem for consideration, either by a favorite author or your own work, please view these GUIDELINES for Saturday Readers Share:

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If you would like to receive an email each time a post appears, please SUBSCRIBE to Verse and Image using the button on the Home Page.

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– Bill

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Dead Reckoning

Posted in family, tagged Clara Jean Cooke Griffin, Cookie, Donna Masini, family, Hyejung Kook, poetry on May 15, 2026| 6 Comments »

1949 Yearbook Staff, Women’s College of the University of North Carolina

[ poetry by Hyejung Kook and Donna Masini from Poem-a-Day ]

Dead Reckoning

to estimate one’s position

without instruments

or celestial observations

calculating direction and distance

traveled from the last known fix

while accounting for tides, currents, grief

drift numbness

sudden storms of pain

unexpected joy

to reckon is to believe

something true

to reckon with the dead

is to believe I can know them

an airy thinness

gleaming

despite

the distance

traveled

I’d like to know how far

I’ve gone

how much farther there is

to go how absence

unfathomable

becomes

something I can carry

Hyejung Kook

Copyright © 2024 by Hyejung Kook. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 16, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets. Hyejung Kook is a Korean American poet from Seoul. She received her BA from Harvard University and holds an MFA from New York University. A Fulbright and Kundiman Fellow, Kook lives in Prairie Village, Kansas.

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Mother’s Day was this past Sunday, May 10. I unboxed my old digital picture frame, the thumb drive from September, 2024 still in place: Mom’s memorial service, two months after her death at age 96. I set it up on the bedside tray in Dad’s room at Chatham Nursing Center and he and I watched it through twice. Infant Mom on Grandma McBride’s lap. Tween Mom on her bike with favorite dog. Graduate Mom in mortarboard at Women’s College in Greensboro. Mother Mom holding my hand as I take my first steps.

And happy, nutty, smiling Mom in all her favorite places with all her favorite people doing all her favorite things. Some of those things we engineered during her last year of life. I measured and helped her stir the batter but she rolled out the nutty fingers to bake. Mary Ellen scheduled the entire family for an afternoon of painting pictures of dogs, Mom’s favorite subject, and she the only true artist among us. And for her last Birthday that hat – knit Duke Blue Devil with protruding horns and eyes – she couldn’t quit laughing while she wore it.

Absence unfathomable. I am carrying it.

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My Father Teaches Me to Play Solitaire

by the window of his hospital room. So late in the day

and he won’t let us cheat. Cards slipping on his rickety tray,

the orderly rows collapsing into one another,

his hand diminishing, he turns over the one card

that won’t fit anywhere. We couldn’t finish.

Wait, I said, we’re almost done. He shook his head.

Luck, chance. No skill involved. No will. No bluff. No time

to start a new game. I left my father waving in his window.

Days later I bought a deck, shuffled the stiff cards, set them up

the way he’d shown me, and—beginner’s luck?—I won.

Can you win a game you’ve played alone? No need to display

a poker face to yourself. No kidding, he said, I just won too.

My father’s a joker. Bruno, our neighbor used to say,

you’re a card. So no surprise what he taught me:

when you’re done you have nothing in your hand.

Donna Masini

Copyright © 2025 by Donna Masini. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 26, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets. Donna Masini is the author of four poetry collections, and is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a New York Foundation for the Arts grant. She is a professor of English and creative writing at Hunter College and lives in New York City. .

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Dad didn’t need me to teach him how to play Rummikub, but at ninety-nine he is requiring a few more nudges and prompts. And he can still beat me. Sometimes.

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Thank you for visiting Verse and Image:

. . . . . every Friday I present one or two poems I’ve read this week that particularly speak to me;

. . . . . some Saturdays I present one or two poems submitted by YOU, my readers.

If you would like to offer a poem for consideration, either by a favorite author or your own work, please view these GUIDELINES for Saturday Readers Share:

https://griffinpoetry.com/about/

If you would like to receive an email each time a post appears, please SUBSCRIBE to Verse and Image using the button on the Home Page.

If you have a hard time finding the SUBSCRIBE button on this WordPress site, you can send me your email address and I will add you to the subscriber list. Send your request to

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Thanks again for joining the conversation.

– Bill

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Passage – Earl Huband

Posted in family, tagged Dix Hill Blues, Earl Huband, family, imagery, Main Steet Rag, nature photography, NC Poets, poetry, Southern writing on March 20, 2026| 5 Comments »

[ with 3 poems by Earl Huband ]

Cocoon-spinner, straining / to engineer the risk out of life.

from Rites of Passage

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A Sister’s Presents

Across the table

two goggle-eyed owls,

my pepper and salt,

hoot at me. Wise to

a bric-a-brac heart,

my sister Mary

surprised me with them

many meals ago.

And here she is still,

cheering me through these

efforts to add spice

to this saucepan life.

Earl Carlton Huband III

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The Pavilion of the Old Chinese Poets

— for Priscilla

Leaves resist the ground.

The ground calls to the trees.

The trees slowly nod their heads

and leaves fall to the ground.

The canoe is propelled

through the parting waves.

Island water whispers;

the canoe rocks.

Here the winds caress

the flanks of the island.

Here the lover caresses

the arms of the beloved.

The moon hides its face

behind fingers of cloud.

Lover, close your eyes

at the touch of love.

Earl Carlton Huband III

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Lost

Do not condemn this granite.

Become one with the stone

and weep as water trickles

down the cracks in its face

Look for your reflection

in the pool of moving water

at the bottom od the stone.

Earl Carlton Huband III

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Years ago, during one of my longer visits, my mother had me sit for a portrait. I watched the back of the canvas, smelled the linseed oil, while she worked ochre into the surface for an hour. Her technique was to create the subject’s shape and dimensions in monochrome, then remove pigment to add detail. Later she would dip into her entire palette to finish the portrait. Only on another visit when the oils had dried did I realize that for this painting she had folded the canvas and painted me on the right half. She opened the hidden side to reveal beside mine another man’s face with Mephistophelean goatee and declared, “I’m calling it ‘Saint and Sinner.’”

How to respond to the idea that my mother considered me a saint? Oldest child, studious, diligent, following the straight and narrow passage through life? I will smile a little that Mom evidently drew some comfort from that image. Only to myself do I confess every thoughtlessness, unkindness, misstep, outright mistake and fuckup I’ve every committed, all those demons that throng three AM when I can’t fall back to sleep. Sins of omission and commission. That is the real passage, straights and turbulence beneath but only untroubled waters showing. On canvas, my mother could create reality from her artist’s imaginings. I ask myself today, is this the life I imagined for myself? My imagination was clearly not sufficient. Short on wisdom, insight, compassion.

Earl Huband’s imagination does the heavy lifting of recreating the reality of his life’s passage in Dix Hill Blues. There are no softened edges in these stories, no cheerful hues to the palette. The first two sections of the book capture the struggles and failures of his family through the generations and paints them into a montage which narrates Earl’s own passage through life. One might at certain points use the term sin, or one might simply call this truth. Earl as poet, however, touches each person and each event with benediction. Yes, we are all human, fallible, broken; yes, love can still enter here. These poems need to be read as a whole to grasp the hopefulness that survives even darkest nights.

The third and fourth sections of the collection are a deep and cleansing breath. A bit of humor from a wry observation, the other side of a dreadful story, a moment of joy: Earl’s imagination is not short on wisdom, insight, compassion. He unwraps his own failings and I am comforted that we are brothers. The poet can be healed by the telling. Perhaps none of the saints that surround me have such a straight and unerring passage as would seem apparent. Perhaps tomorrow will be the day I glean a little wisdom. Perhaps I will pick this book back up and read again from the beginning.

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Earl Huband lives with his wife Priscilla Webster-Williams, also an accomplished poet, in Durham NC. I have met him many times at various poetry events and never seen him without a warm and welcoming smile. Dix Hill Blues is his third collection and is available HERE

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Thank you for visiting Verse and Image:

. . . . . every Friday I present one or two poems I’ve read this week that particularly speak to me;

. . . . . every Saturday I present one or two poems submitted by YOU, my readers.

If you would like to offer a poem for consideration, either by a favorite author or your own work, please view these GUIDELINES for Saturday Readers Share:

https://griffinpoetry.com/about/

If you would like to receive an email each time a post appears, please SUBSCRIBE to Verse and Image using the button on the Home Page.

If you have a hard time finding the SUBSCRIBE button on this WordPress site, you can send me your email address and I will add you to the subscriber list. Send your request to

COMMENTS@GRIFFINPOETRY.COM

Thanks again for joining the conversation.

– Bill