A Blessing

Why lean in, toward poetry?

Poetry opens portals long shut and battened down.

I use the nautical term here as the definition of “battened down” to secure a ship’s hatch tarpaulins especially when rough water is expected.

Exposing ourselves to a different type of communication has potential to reveal different types of knowing and understanding.

This poem “A Blessing” by James Wright always has the power to capture the here-and-now moment for me. The poet presents an opportunity, a gift that is truly a special gift- of joining the experience in the field with these horses. The softness, the intrigue, and the belonging is both intimate and alive. This intimacy and aliveness offers a glimpse and a shared breath, into the moment to moment mystery of our existence…. when we pause.

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“A Blessing” 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.

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.