by Meg Freer
Magnolia Grandiflora
I loved you before the evolution of bees
100 million years ago when the beetles
pollinated the magnolia trees.
After last winter’s Texas storm the trees
we planted are still in shock
but the arborist says they will recover.
Every month I wait outside for you in the car
of COVID masked sad while inside your bladder
is catheterized with mitomycin to kill the cancer cells.
I marry you again & again to my flowers
hardened carpel working to avoid
damage from the gnawing mandibles as they feed.
I ghost all the beetles pollinating these prehistoric trees
I bee now
certain that your last chemotherapy is anti-elegy &
all the blossoms fill the sky
when you climb into the car
after your final treatment.
Like the magnolia tree that has survived
all the events of extinction I drive us home
heading in the direction where life begins.
Stephanie K. Merrill (she / her) is a retired high school English teacher. Her poems have been published in The Rise Up Review, Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, UCity Review, Moist Poetry Journal, Amethyst Review, Dear Poetry Journal, One Art, and elsewhere. Stephanie K. Merrill is a Pushcart Prize nominee. She lives in Austin, Texas, USA.
Meg Freer is an award-winning poet and piano teacher in Ontario, where she enjoys the outdoors year-round. She has published two poetry chapbooks and holds a Graduate Certificate with Distinction in Creative Writing from Toronto’s Humber School of Writers. She keeps visual images in her head for a long time and her inspiration for poetry and photography often comes from intriguing juxtapositions, clusters and angles in both the human and the natural world. Highlights of her published work can be found on her Facebook page.