James Arlington Wright Poems

Hit Title Date Added
1.
A Blessing

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.
...

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
...

3.
Autumn Begins In Martins Ferry, Ohio

In the Shreve High football stadium,
I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,
And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,
And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,
...

4.
Beginning

The moon drops one or two feathers into the fiels.
The dark wheat listens.
Be still.
Now.
...

5.
A Winter Daybreak Above Vence

The night's drifts
Pile up below me and behind my back,
Slide down the hill, rise again, and build
Eerie little dunes on the roof of the house.
...

6.
Hook

I was only a young man
In those days. On that evening
The cold was so God damned
Bitter there was nothing.
...

7.
Saint Judas

When I went out to kill myself, I caught
A pack of hoodlums beating up a man.
Running to spare his suffering, I forgot
My name, my number, how my day began,
...

8.
Small Frogs Killed On The Highway

Still,
I would leap too
Into the light,
If I had the chance.
...

9.
A Note Left In Jimmy Leonard's Shack

Near the dry river's water-mark we found
Your brother Minnegan,
Flopped like a fish against the muddy ground.
Beany, the kid whose yellow hair turns green,
...

Relieved, I let the book fall behind a stone.
I climb a slight rise of grass.
I do not want to disturb the ants
Who are walking single file up the fence post,
...

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