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
Monday, February 8, 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
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?
I have no idea where it even comes from. I have it - copied from somewhere - stored on my computer. I love it.
Post a Comment