Remnants of The Medicine Wheel
Solitary trekkers glide along the trails today
jingling prayer beads and water bottles,
freshstarting pilgrimages that never get old.
They can see so much deeper
before the leaves begin.
On the twentieth day of March,
I must have a new-year prayer
to the Awakened Air,
and the Sun don't care
about the books and boxes in the house
where I hid from winter.
Peace. May you find where two trails cross,
where you must learn to give way:
step aside for the southbounders,
offer directions to the next post office
and shelter.
Remnants of a medicine wheel.
You know the incantation:
North: Winter, Ancestors, Wisdom, White.
East: Spring, Innocence, Birth and Belief, Green.
West: Autumn, The Look-Within-Place, Black;
South: Summer, Illumination, Fire, Passion, the Gold Morning Star, Red.
Turn. Turn. Turn,
Where did you start on the wheel this time?
I walk toward Northeast.
Only by touching trees, shoulders, rocks, hands,
the first rhododendron buds
can you circumnavigate to the balance of all directions
where we share our lonelinesses.
 
Born in North Carolina, Robert Merritt lives in the mountains of West Virginia. He is the author of Early Music and the Aesthetics of Ezra Pound and the poetry collections Sense of Direction, View from Blue-Jade Mountain, The Language of Longing, and Landscape Architects. He has recently published in moonShine, North American Review, Psaltery & Lyre, and The James Dickey Review. He is Professor Emeritus at Bluefield University. He has served as visiting professor in English at Jiangsu Second Normal University in Nanjing, China, and as a vice president for The National Association for Poetry Therapy.
Amethyst Review 