Our Lady of the Ridge – prose poetry by Susan Mary Freiss

Our Lady of the Ridge

I First meeting

In a forest of undoing, a maple grew and grew for 80 years or more, gracefully pregnant above a west-facing slope; she is only an upright trunk now, still in elegant skirts with her sweet swayback and tender protruding belly swollen from years of growing up within gravity’s pull on this steep and holy ridge. Three parts of her, each thick as a mature tree, once met and extended from her neck. Now they lie behind, below, beside, where they collapsed on a terribly windy night with only stumps for arms that rest fingerless of extending leaf or bud. Redwing blackbirds flock to discuss their spring dissemination; saplings crowd her remains while animal prints approach her body from below. She is empty, hollow, losing her skin. All this personification, all this chronicling of undoing! The blackbirds quiet and begin again, cranes saw sound into the ground from above, robins interject a melody. I take care and walk on with my stick.

II Return  

Drawn back, I rest on one of her three children—no, these trunk-like limbs were part of her, but aren’t they? Our children? Mine, themselves graying and sustaining me; hers, sprouting mushrooms, growing moss. From this angle, our maple matriarch appears to be looking down the ridge, a large gnarl at her trunk top, a protuberance—her head hanging, an old woman with one remaining limb extending blessing, calling out for what it is worth, for all she is worth. Am I projecting? Rain condenses drops of cool humidity, a distant red squirrel clucks the seconds in the maple grove, the maple graveyard. Always before, I sought the oldest living tree, but this substantive specter with graceful rooted skirts, pregnant swayback belly, craggy open back, crone’s head, and outstretched arm is speaking to me about how lives move on and on and on with nowhere to go and always somewhere to be.

III Your aspirant

Mosquitos hum their high-pitched hymn. I am back sitting below, this time on your south side upon your two-pronged daughter with her fungi frill. I see perforations in your bark, fresh pileated woodpecker holes bleeding sawdust on your skirts, and a high-placed umbilicus, the scarred site of a lost limb—no, an eye, a portal into fathomless black darkness. I allow myself to be seen and drawn in. Another hole, two-thirds moon, larger than any other and open to the sky. I’m certain this is your heart, the organic curve, a bark circle halved, concave, radiant unstained glassless green light beyond. I aspire to such a transparent heart. I have become your aspirant. I sit that you may see me and my tangled 70 years with your elephantine eye. I sit with you in our patience, yours holding mine. Is this a pastoral poem? Objectifying, fantasizing? No, this is alchemy. You engulf me in your black-eyed, tender gaze. In time, I will head down the ridge inside cicadas’ waves of rattle and through the web of humid haze to the cabin, car, highway, and town, but I’ll remain in your velvety black line of sight with the breath of air and a shaft of green light in the cave of my heart.

Susan Mary Freiss writes poetry because she hears many things in listening to everyday and pervasive silence. When she records what she hears and listens for more, she learns. She is a mother, grandmother, gardener, teacher, and activist in Madison, Wisconsin. Her poem “Below and Beyond War” is posted on the Madison Vets for Peace website.