Hello interneters, for this article I've decided to use a poem I have been working on over the last two weeks for my imaginative writing class. It is based on a prompt where we had to find ourselves in google maps and look back through the years at where we were. I ended up finding my home in late autumn of 2007 and early spring 2013 and was inspired by the two maple trees in my front yard and the statue of Mary who somehow disappeared over the 6 years since the last time the google maps people went through my neighborhood. Enjoy :)
MOTHER MARY AND THE RED MAPLES
I. Before the Assumption
Feet flooded with their browned lifeless leaves, two struggling brother
saplings play in the front yard of my home of 6 years.
A lonely stone statue of the Virgin Mother Mary
attends to them from the porch
with a celestial--yet concerned--look,
as her two cherished saplings caper to the melody
of cruel crescendoing whispers of their Danse Macabre.
Leaves daintily glide from red maple limbs
like paper airplanes once did.
Seasons pass as the seedlings are cultivated by their mother’s
ingrained devotion.
she watered them, she protected them, she nagged them, she still loves them.
II.Years After
Amongst the blooming greenery, the two teenage red maple
siblings survive with a slight lean in the front yard of my home of 12 years.
The patriarch’s white corolla planted in the driveway
accompanies them amongst a facade
of well-kempt urban landscaping
unable to mask what is missed:
Mother Mary. Where has she gone?
The bell had tolled too soon for her assumption.
Tears trickle down red maple faces
like dripping sap from pierced trunks.
The place on the porch where she once stood now only filled with
nostalgic memoir,
as heathen red maple branches reach for heaven.
