The Road to the Spring: Collected Poems of Mary Austin

Good Medicine

365 Good Medicine How well I know what I mean to do When the snows are shed on the hill, And under the drifts the tamarack lifts The singing needles are still. When the snows are so deep that the speckled grouse Can perch on the broadest boughs, And safe in the lee of a strong backed pine The chilly robins will house. I shall go to the Paiute medicine man In his wickiup close by the creek. He shall make me a singing medicine, And this be the gift I shall seek: That he shall divide my self in two In the time old skill of his kind, So while the shape of me sits by the fire Far travels the self of my mind. Then I shall go up where the shining drifts Drop back from the rearing peaks, By the shining sag in the meadow of snow To follow the trails of the creeks. And deep in under the blue white sludge To tickle the dozing trout, Where the brown bear sucks at his paws asleep To know what he dreams about. When the firs are bent in a wind built tent And the boughs of the buckthorn lean In a snow thatched arch to the boulders brown, And the robins flit between, I shall softly slip like an errant flake In the swirling swarm of the snow, 366 And round by the peaks where the wind flood seeks I shall find the things I would know. Editor’s Notes AU 215: single clean sheet, typescript. ...