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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James Wright
James Wright
James Arlington Wright was born in Martins Ferry, Ohio, on December 13, 1927. His father worked for fifty years at a glass factory, and his mother left school at fourteen to work...
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FURTHER READING
Spring
Another Attempt at Rescue
by M. L. Smoker
Birds Again
by Jim Harrison
Black Petal
by Li-Young Lee
Butterfly Catcher
by Tina Cane
City That Does Not Sleep
by Federico García Lorca
Diary [Surface]
by Rachel Zucker
Equinox
by Joy Harjo
From you have I been absent in the spring... (Sonnet 98)
by William Shakespeare
If a Wilderness
by Carl Phillips
In cold spring air
by Reginald Gibbons
In the Memphis Airport
by Timothy Steele
Morning News
by Marilyn Hacker
National Poetry Month
by Elaine Equi
Prologue of the Earthly Paradise
by William Morris
Spring and All
by William Carlos Williams
Spring is like a perhaps hand
by E. E. Cummings
Spring Snow
by Arthur Sze
Springing
by Marie Ponsot
Related Prose
Groundbreaking Book: The Branch Will Not Break by James Wright (1963)
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A Blessing  
by James Wright

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.



Copyright © 2005 James Wright. From Selected Poems. Reprinted with permission of Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.
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