Monday, February 8, 2010

Poem of the Day

My Grandmother's Ghost

She skimmed the yellow water like a moth,
Trailing her feet across the shallow stream;
She saw the berries, paused and sampled them
Where a slight spider cleaned his narrow tooth.
Light in the air, she fluttered up the path,
So delicate to shun the leaves and damp,
Like some young wife, holding a slender lamp
To find her stray child, or the moon, or both.
Even before she reached the empty house,
She beat her wings ever so lightly, rose,
Followed a bee where apples blew like snow;
And then, forgetting what she wanted there,
Too full of blossom and green light to care,
She hurried to the ground, and slipped below.


James Wright

2 comments:

Andrew said...

Is this one of his early works? I know his work fairly well, and yet this poem I'm unfamiliar with.

I found a photo of James Wright at 25 (kid-phenom of the poetry world, what with his golden ear and photographic memory) and it somewhat shocked me - him being a big, handsome, broad-faced young man, (having an affair with an equally beautiful and young Anne Sexton.) Poets, young?

The Bride said...

I have no idea where it even comes from. I have it - copied from somewhere - stored on my computer. I love it.