The Way, and: The Letter, and: Journey Into Autumn, and: The Deer Meadow

Poems by Albert Stewart The Way I have looked for you always The way was arduous the mountains cold at the summit the view unreal as a photo The hinterland nourished a recondite fecundity of desire the plains sown rich in deceit I waited for you by the river of no mercy swam unwarned of the water's peril I was a child on Yellow Mountain in watercolor springs willow song summers Where were you on the avalanche slopes grotesque survivor deserts windfall autumns After many months the Christmas Rose withered Home was somewhere else If you are coming come now I survive gulping air like a fish hollow as bird bone The Letter You are rare As fragrance Of wild crabapple bloom First thrush On honeydew mornings Touch me This moment I am fragile Easily broken Be delicate Whisper The saving word Hover me close I will heal 38 Journey Into Autumn Over the meadow and up by the path where cows once trundled down from high pastures and up and around fallow flats, home now to wild survivors, where corn grew and grass and, later, an orchard fruiting marvelously in open spaces of my meditation, and on and on and down and down to the great yellowing beechwood grove and down over grey cliffs and by the creekway home. The year was done with flowering, all the leaves turned, turning and falling, twirling, falling, all movement downward, inward, the fulfilled seed, the small rootbud waiting, readied for returning. And always, always, my thoughts of you a garden exquisite with all the year's wild blossoming. Here is ginseng for you, pawpaws, arrowwood pods, a leaf like a cool flame (a camouflage of dying still green along the veins), a root of wild ginger. They are born of earth, air, light, and the secret ingredient-epitomies of the year, epiphanies. You will not find these in any other supermarket. Now not. Not ever. See intricate designs of wildness. Taste a seasoned earth. Smell the ginger. 39 r~ I¦¿¿mg£&**>«5¦~*3c*s¿. The Deer Meadow All that lovely, long remembered summer the meadow Went uncut and grew, one might think, in wild abandon Of unspecialness, an everchanging flowerpot of color. It was for the deer that came there, morning and evening, Moving and nibbling, seldom wholly seen, among the riot Of contending weeds and grasses, it went uncut. And for them it was named. The season's lenient amplitude permitted talk Of The Peaceable Kindom and how naming comes about, Often for some limiting specialness of event. The Flower Field, Firefly Meadow, The Million-tongued, Would have done as well, or any hundred others, for all The ritual clicking, fluting, chomping, flowering, That went on there. But the name remained, long after the deer were gone, The flowers had tied up their packets of seeds, And all the rest had filed their seasonal reports In new fur, webs, cocoons, burrows. And the Peaceable Kingdom, like the sacred and holy, Lived on in the mind and a painting, never at home, It seems, in the red reality of blood. 40 ...