The Return

By Jack Stewart

---

Winter has cracked the dirt
into pieces
like a dropped vase.

Bring the hose and turn the earth
and watch the earth turn,
the sky relax into itself.

The buds of the roses are still
hard. The green fishing rods
of their stems lean.

Don’t worry about them.
Tend the season.
Pull the weeds

of shallow-rooted tragedy
and spread the mulch
of patience.

Then let imagination
sway in the hammock
of memory.

You need only a few weeks
of the slightest rain.
One morning you will

waken to a field
of pink butterflies,
their petal-wings sifting in the sun,
​
and believe again.

---

Jack Stewart was educated at the University of Alabama and Emory University and was a Brittain Fellow at The Georgia Institute of Technology. His first book, No Reason, was published by the Poeima Poetry Series in 2020, and his work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Poetry, The American Literary Review, Nimrod, Image and others.