Mother of the County Woods
Inspired by winters in Saint Mary’s County, Maryland
From the lichen-covered Mary statue,
robe chipped and
paint flecked off,
face up in a creekside wood,
ghostesses of Southern Maryland gaze forth,
surveying their sphere
as the faint whoosh of spirit-world leaks out Her concrete pores,
warning children on a dare
or man-boys shooting paintball
or crabbers lolling in the sun:
the membrane holding this world from the next stretches so thin
beech trees--never losing leaves--whisper silver secrets from the dead.
These restless Spirits number doyennes of Piscataway—
translated to "Women Where The River Bends,"
a Confederate deserter girl
conscripted as her family's "summer-boy,"
two sister slaves dead in childbirth one week apart—
Lo, the grieving mother, and
the suicided schoolgirl—slipped below sharp ice to a brackish grave—
though no one knows that yet.
Blessed Lady, half-buried lawn ornament,
chucked out a car window by teens drunken on a spree,
attends soft, snow-muffled afternoons with souls,
listening for a school bus,
the cracks crack crack of black powder rifles creeping through a corps,
or grandchildren's bundled steps crunching virgin snow.
By Mary's intersession, the ghostesses inhale
scent of a waxy-breath doe—
lips exploring hints of red button mushrooms by Her side,
feel tickling mouse-toes trailing mama below Mary’s mantle,
hear ping pip ping of holly berries loosed in a gust of weary wind,
fall broken by Her outstretched arms.
One morning with Her, they wake
struggling against tape-strings tied 'round trunks of firs too wide to hug
and the drawl of surveyors navigating that steep incline—
piercing pointy instruments pitched in loam.
A foreman clutches binders and
dreams of money shilled from rich outsiders
convinced a cantilevered creek house was "a marvelous idea."
A vestige of rusty goat-fencing gobbled by cedar
slices one man's finger,
his blood drops mixing with remnants of their own
in snow-slush sanctity.
Tomorrow, that man is set to fly Her, crumbling statue,
again unceremoniously,
baptized into backwater.
She will sink,
smothered in pluff mud—
a sacrifice exchanged,
so workers may retrieve
the wasted body of another girl.