Afternoon Light in Grace, Idaho

Memory Thread, circa 1960: My adored little boy poses with my beautiful young daughter 

while we visit S's parents at their home in Grace. What is he holding in his hand? 

I don't remember, The red you see behind him is from the gorgeous geraniums

my mother-in-law, Luella, grew every year. I never could get such large blooms.

The pink brick facing on the house Lu and Sim put on themselves, in their sixties,

after they had the house moved 60 miles from Liberty, Idaho, and

put on the lot next to Scott's sister's place. 

They did the dry-walling, too, and that's how Lu broke her ankle.

While we lived in the West, we visited them every year;

it still makes my children happy to talk about it.

The Other Side of the River

Easter again, and a small rain falls

On the mockingbird and the housefly,

                                                             on the Chevrolet

In its purple joy

And the TV antennas huddled across the hillside---

Easter again, and the palm trees hunch

Deeper beneath their burden,

                                               the dark puddles take in

Whatever is given them,

And nothing rises more than halfway out of itself---

Easter with all its little mouths open into the rain.

2004

Charles Wright      (born 1935)

Oxford Book of American Poetry, 2006, page 920

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This is the first part of a four-page poem by our current poet laureate. The sections are not numbered, but are divided, one from the next, by three stars in a row. Two of Wright's books of poems have garnered the Pulitzer and the National Book Award. If you will read this section aloud, you will be pleased by its lovely rhythm and sense.