Louise Stedman Bostick - 4 Short Poems (1922-26)

Forgotten Poets #94 | Reissue #11

     
              —: Life :—

       You may enthrone your heart
       In the petals
       Of a rosebud,
       Or form with it the nucleus
       Of a snowball;
       Inevitably
       Both will perish.
    

    
              —: Evening :—

       With little skeins
       Of violet dusk and cloud,
       The grey nun twilight
       Embroiders patiently
       The crimson sky;
       Then pagan night
       Takes pattern there
       Winding stars that silver
       In her hair.
    

      
              —: Autumn :—

       A leaf flutters down,
       And is dead;
       A butterfly glides from a flower;
       The summer is a waning:
       Instead,
       Autumn is queen of the hour.

       Death stares at me,
       Very near;
       For summer and I have grown old:
       Summer will wake
       At the spring;
       But I will lie cold.
    

    
              —: April :—

       When April comes
       Bring me a flower;
       Not a boquet
       From a lavish bower;
       But just one bud
       From an apple-tree,
       And lay it above
       The dust of me.
       When soft pale rains
       On the blossoms cling,
       And the earth is moist,
       And the robins sing,
       Remember I loved you most
       At Spring.
    

Louise Stedman Bostick (1891-1922) attended Syracuse University, and was a member of the Alpha Phi sorority, where she met her future husband Maner Hart Bostick. They were married in 1911 at Niagara Falls, but the marriage appears to have been kept secret from their families, and in 1916 they remarried publicly in Singapore. Bostick died shortly after in 1919; following this, Stedman began publishing poetry, but sadly contracted tuberculosis and died not long after in 1922, at the age of 31. (Diane LM, Find A Grave, 2012)

“There are songs of varying degrees of beauty, delicacy, and emotion, but those in the tiny volume of Louise Stedman Bostick’s Poems compel one to recognize the sincerity, the loveliness, the fortitude of her song. One listens eagerly to catch the next note, yet reluctantly hears the former ones die. Perhaps the realization that the impetus to sing seemed to come from deep suffering, has made those who knew and loved Louise, feel with deeper intensity the spontaneity and the truth of each lyric.” (Dela K. Hilfinger, The Alpha Phi Quarterly, 1924)

    
           For Louise Stedman Bostick
                       by Dick Whyte

              the sun
       (& whatever the sun knows)

              a simultaneous
              ceremony:

       slinging shadows
              in & out

                     of belonging
    

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