The Beautiful Anthology Read Online Free PDF

that face. Mother – kind-hearted and shy, far from unmanageable. I don’t have to be that child – savage and feral, overwhelmed by some fury boiling inside me. It is true that what’s born in me lies still for now, until I am grown and find my way. But only time will tell: that dormant nature might be something calm and loving – truly beautiful, like Mother.

STEPHEN WALTER
    UPLAND FALL
    September and the streamside ash
    Gleams yellow in the afternoon;
    They drowsily behold the flash
    Of leaves against dark water, soon
     
    Forgotten as they pass below
    The ridgeline’s overarching green;
    Lulled by resinous air they slow,
    Then touch and shed their clothes unseen
     
    Then sleep embowered in white pine.
    Brushing needles from her sleeve
    He says, I’ve never seen so fine
    An early fall. Please stay. Don’t leave
     
    Me in these mountains on my own,
    Not now before the leaves have turned;
    To wander the bright paths alone
    Would be too much to bear. I yearned
     
    For you all summer, now you’re here:
    Why ruin splendor at its start?
    At night the golden star shines clear;
    He knows that she will soon depart.
     
    October and the tupelo
    Ignites into a glossy blaze;
    Uphill the dogwood is aglow
    With scarlet drupes set in a haze
     
    Of dusky red as she lies slack,
    Half-sleeping, head upon his arm.
    He traces curves along her back
    With a stray leaf; the days run warm
     
    But mornings clot with mist until
    At dawn their bare feet slide on frost;
    A week of rain drives in its chill
    As if in grief at ripeness lost,
     
    Then evening takes them unawares
    With sudden brightness as the sky
    Clears to reveal the waning flares
    Of silver maples lit up by
     
    A parting ray against dark cloud
    Like water sun-flecked over rocks,
    And gusting winds flush waves of loud
    Birds, scattering the migrant flocks
     
    Like leaves as twilight turns to red.
    November brings the bleakest fog,
    A film of ashes in his bed.
    He sickens at brown leaves that clog
     
    The ditch downstream from a bur oak;
    No birds sing in the bare-stripped tree.
    He dwells upon the words she spoke:
    We love the season best when we
     
    Forget where it is heading.
    Splendor has no start, she said, or chance
    To stay; no use in dreading
    What fades already at each glance.
     
    What he dreads now are colder sights
    Like bloody feathers on fresh snow,
    Desolation of the Long Nights
    Moon shining on dead twigs, the slow
     
    Paralysis of brittle winter
    Light, stubble fields strewn with decay.
    He wonders if he dreamed of her,
    Yet feels she left him anyway.

GREG OLEAR
    THE LINE WAVER
    The garish glass monstrosity directly above the front door of a typical McMansion – its distinguishing feature – is called a Palladian window. Although in the real estate patois McMansions are known as Colonials, the Palladian window is a more recent innovation, re-popularized by the so-called Adam style of the Victorian period.
    I know this because my son, Dominick, is interested in architecture, and we often read a dense tome called A Field Guide to American Houses . When we come to the Adam houses (named, incidentally, for the brother architects who popularized them, and not the orchard thief of Biblical renown), I tell my son that I abhor the style, because of the distinctive Palladian window.
    “Why?” he asks, as five-year-olds will.
    I find this a difficult question to answer. I could respond that I find Palladian windows aesthetically ugly, but, while true, that isn’t really why I detest them. Or I could blame my aversion on their lack of utility; vestiges of French doors, Palladian windows have lost their function with their balcony and are, in modern houses, giant panes of glass illuminating unused upstairs alcoves. But there are plenty of not-very-useful features in other kinds of houses that I do like – the exaggerated roof of the French Eclectics, say. So that isn’t it, either.
    “Why, Daddy?”
    I decide to cop out, as fathers will. “I just