Ballad of a Homesick Traveler / Ezra Lewis

Abroad I sought a nearer truth
To lay up in my heart,
Employing newness ever-new,
& Indigence’s arts,

Whose wages are but further Need:
Fond thoughts of Home, & Spring!
As if they still awaited me,
With June, & Berrying—

But I was gone & far away
When Peonies blew, & drooped;
I’d fled before the full of May,
while Noon yet struggled, stooped;

And when my serviceberries fell
Untasted to the earth,
I had but vain Cathedral Bells
To solace me the dearth.

I never shade sought from those leaves
That redden now at home;
Now apples toss from rustled trees
When chill winds blow.

The Eye should ripen with the Year,
The Mind with Grape, & Grain,
But I have purchased, dear as dear,
Only fallowness again,

& shall return to meet a Fall
As strange & cold to me
As any hill or lake of Gaul,
& lie some while, and weep.

Ezra Lewis is a poet and mosaic artist from the Spokane region. This is his second published poem; his first appeared in RiverLit.