(Ooops! I don't wanna sit here and read this now! Let me return to Kate's Homepage: Kate Stevenson's Hotlist)
by Kate Stevenson October 1, 1995
I. PILGRIMAGE
Last birds of autumn, I hear you
raise your pilgrim song
and call me home.
An autumn pilgrim, my Canterbury is the farm,
Where the woods of my childhood beckon to me
to return before the long prairie cold.
Bright dying leaves, just hold fast
and save one more show for me.
Great spirit wind, please speak softly
and pause before you breathe down
the final fall curtain.
Dying fires of sumac and woodbine,
scarlet amid the pale of oak and ash,
let me walk your paths once more.
I long to plunge myself into the
ephemeral timelessness of autumn
And to revel in the solitary beauty
of one last perfect day in the woods.
II. STARS
Yes, I'm a trekker;
I can quote old and new captains by chapter and verse
And I believe in a better humanity somewhere beyond,
But tonight I prefer my own star trek on the prairie,
On a star deep night on the plains
When I am a lone shuttlecraft and Orion is my home.
III. FIRST VOICE
All is quiet, dark and calm.
Even the great voice of the prairie wind rests
As I lie awake before sunrise on the farm.
I hear the call of the first voice of the morning,
and I strain to discern it --
A coyote, perhaps?
A wild goose?
A crane?
Only one voice calls on this clean autumn morning --
No answering bird chorus like in the summer,
When they are loud enough to pull me out of bed.
Just one lone call and me, awake,
Hearing, not knowing, whose voice calls
to a species not my own.
IV. MOURNING DOVE SOUL
The plaintive voice of the prairie summer
Falls silent for the season.
In the wake of a volley of hunters' guns,
My kind flies south.
They leave me here, a human woman with
the soul of a mourning dove
who has lost her song.
Wingless, I will wait out the silent winter
with peaceful joy until I hear
the first haunting cry of the new spring.
My kind will return.
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