*
Lindy Conroe has taught college English for eighteen years and holds an MSW in social work from Boston University. She has worked in hospital and community social work and had her own practice in psychotherapy for many years. She has written two children’s books, Rockafella Jones and the Hidden Treasure and Rockafella Jones and the Journey Home (published by Blue Mustang Press), and has just finished an adult novel, Clearly Hidden.

Lindy Conroe

Reprieve

Then, surrounded by anxiety and
fear,
we took a walk,
stopping along the edge
of a fenced-in marsh.
Sitting on a boulder,
we watched and listened,
lamenting that the
red winged blackbirds had made
such a brief appearance
this year,
perhaps anxious to take
themselves to distant marshes.
A small tree, which I could not name,
glimmered and rustled just inside the chain
link fence, its rounded leaves
twisting and shining with
shades of Spring green.
Overhead the chartreuse
of newly opened oak leaves
made yellow lace against the sky.
Two tiny birds swooped in
tandem over the cattails, dancing.
A lone bird flew across the
open marsh into
the lace-leafed oak.
As it perched, almost hidden,
the barest flash of red:
there, then gone. A swoop
back across the marsh named
him, red stripes open to
the wind

— Lindy Conroe

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