spring beauties

Spring BeautiesAuthor(s): Ruth StoneSource: The Iowa Review, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Spring, 2002), p. 157Published by: University of IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20155080 .

Accessed: 12/06/2014 20:40

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RUTH STONE

Spring Beauties

The abandoned campus, 157

empty brick buildings and early June

when you came to visit me;

crossing the states midway, the straggled belts of little roads;

hitch hiking with your portable typewriter. The campus, an academy of trees,

under which some hand, the wind's I guess, had scattered the pale light of thousands of spring beauties,

petals stained with pink veins;

secret, blooming for themselves.

We sat among them.

Your long fingers; thin body and long bones of improbable genius; some scattered gene as Kafka must have had.

Your deep voice, this passing dust of miracles.

That simple that was myself, half conscious, as

though each moment was a page

where words appeared; the bent hammer of the type struck against the moving ribbon.

The light air, the restless leaves;

the ripple of time warped by our longing.

There, as if we were painted

by some unknown impressionist.

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