Painting The Old Homestead by Ron Grimes
The Hill Maiden
(for Linda, over in the valley)
She is moving among the phantom
Rocks of reverie hurtling through
By mind bringing days into darkness
Where the pull of growth rings
The heart and spurs the soul
Where her wish strings questions
In the mysterious night of snow
Bringing a promise that only the hills can sing.
Her smile waits behind a frown of swords
That rend her days
In the melancholy of the deep valley
Of dreams where she lives among flowers
Gathering her moods that may bring peace
Once the sorrow of lonely distance
Has closed on hands—
The same hands that Zen-like reach
To answer each knock at the door of her heart
Broken to be mended by tender time.
Her mind is speeding through a galaxy
Of intensity where the blood rose
Will speak to her frozen will
All forgiven by decree in warring winds—
The nature of her plight?
Without wings
She will still spring into flight.
Mr. Sedam’s Poem to a Girl He Called “The Hill Maiden”
When Mr. Sedam told me that he had written a poem for me, I was thrilled and excitedly curious. I was only seventeen so my ability to understand any poem was very limited. My favorite poem at that stage of my literary education was Walter de la Mare’s “Silver,” a very accessible but delightful poem.
So when Mr. Sedam finally handed me the poem, I remained baffled for many years as to its meaning. I admit that I could not see myself in that poem at all. I didn’t want to ask the pertinent question, “What does it mean?,” only to reveal my ignorance to my well-respected teacher. I knew that he thought I was smart, and asking such a question might reveal me to be otherwise.
As he introduced the poem to me, he had said only that he struggled with the title. His first inclination was that it might sound as if he were calling me a “Hillbilly.” I thought that was funny, because I was, in fact, a Hillbilly—my parents and other relatives were from Kentucky and had moved up to Indiana for their jobs.
I was born in Indiana, but we lived out in the country in one of the few areas of Indiana that does have hills. I lived on a hill, walked the hills around my home. Our 33-acre farm was parceled out on three levels.
That my teacher would know enough about me to want to avoid calling me a Hillbilly was interesting. I discovered that teachers know more about their students than those students realize. I thought back to my first grade teacher, Mrs. Amy Helms, mentioning to me one day that I lived over in the valley.
I had not been aware that my home was in a valley until she said that. And then Mr. Sedam, a decade later, was also aware that I lived over in the valley, and he added the delicious fact that I lived among the hills.
Though the years, I continued to revisit this title, trying to decipher its meaning, still trying to find myself in it. It was after having lived several decades, completed a PhD in literature and rhetoric, reading and studying thousands of other poems, and studying the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda that I can now boast that I understand the poem, “The Hill Maiden.”
I confess to being a rather Gloomy Gus in high school, and Mr. Sedam fought to overcome in me my doom and gloom. I was always bringing to him philosophical notions that smacked of nihilism, and he would smack each one down with his pure optimistic counterarguments.
At the time, it infuriated me, but as I grew in knowledge and that maturity began to “ring[] the heart and spur[] the soul,” I could see that Mr. Sedam had been right about everything he said about beauty and order in the world.
I’m sure he must have thought he failed in his endeavor to steer me in the right direction, and one of my particular sadnesses in life is that he died before I could show him otherwise. I gave him a ball point pin for Christmas during my junior year of high school—four months after meeting him for the first time in his American history class; he seemed to like it, called it a handsome pen.
He gave me a lifetime of special thoughts and poetry as a place to keep them. And as I cherish the poem he penned especially for me, I realize that important as words are, it is the mystic presence within them that carries the true meaning. Mr. Sedam is responsible for shining a light on the path that led me to that realization.
Linda Sue Grimes, Ph.D.
Ball State University – Class of 1987
Hill Maiden Name: Linda Sue Richardson
Centerville Senior High School (IN) – Class of 1964
House on the Hill – where my sister still lives
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