Three Poems for James Wright

1. Hearing of Your Illness
I went out
from the news of your illness
like a broken bone

I spoke your name
to the sickle moon and saw her white wing
fall back toward the blackness, but she
rowed deep past that hesitation, and
kept rising.

Then I went down
to a black creek and alder grove
that is Ohio like nothing else is
and told them. There was an owl there,
sick of its hunger but still
trapped in it, unable to be anything else.
And the creek
tippled on down over some dark rocks
and the alders
breathed fast in their red blossoms.

Then I lay down in a rank and spring-sweet field.
Weeds sprouting in the darkness, and some
small creatures rustling about, living their lives
as they do, moment by moment.
I felt better, telling them about you.
They know what pain is, and they knew you,
and they would have stopped too, as I
was longing to do, everything, the hunger
and the flowing.

That they could not—
merely loved you and waited
to take you back

as a stone,
as a small quick Ohio creek,
as the beautiful pulse of everything,
meanwhile not missing one shred of their own

assignments of song
and muscle—
was what I learned there, so I

got up finally, with a grief
worthy of you, and went home.

2. Early Morning in Ohio
A late snowfall.
In the white morning the trains
whistle and bang in the freightyard,
shifting track, getting ready
to get on with it, to roll out
into the country again, to get
far away from here and closer
to somewhere else.
A mile away, leaving the house, I hear them
and stop, astonished.

Of course. I thought they would stop
when you did. I thought you’d never sicken
anyway, or, if you did, Ohio
would fall down too, barn
by bright barn, into

hillsides of pain: torn boards,
bent nails, shattered
windows. My old dog

who doesn’t know yet he is only mortal
bounds limping away
through the weeds, and I don’t do
anything to stop him.

I remember
what you said.

And think how somewhere in Tuscany
a small spider might even now
be stepping forth, testing
the silks of her web, the morning air,
the possibilities; maybe even, who knows,
singing a tiny song.

And if the whistling of the trains drags through me
like wire, well, I can hurt can’t I? The white fields
burn or my eyes swim, whichever; anyway I whistle
to the old dog and when he comes finally
I fall to my knees in the glittering snow, I throw
my arms around him.

3. The Rose
I had a red rose to send you,
but it reeked of occasion, I thought,
so I didn’t. Anyway
it was the time
the willows do what they do
every spring, so I cut some
down by a dark Ohio creek and was ready
to mail them to you when the news came
that nothing
could come to you
in time
anymore
ever.

I put down the phone
and I thought I saw, on the floor of the room, suddenly,
a large box,
and I knew, the next thing I had to do,
was lift it
and I didn’t know if I could.

Well, I did.
But don’t call it anything
but what it was—the voice
of a small bird singing inside, Lord,
how it sang, and kept singing!
how it keeps singing!
in its deep
and miraculous
composure.