Occasional serendipities are our lucky glimpses at the deep connective tissue of the world, moments when our eyes are opened wide enough to see the clasps and couplings amongst and between. Today I’ll be in Rochester, Minnesota, a place I didn’t realize/remember lay on my way to the wedding for which I’d already planned to use this poem months ago.

WORK

“A Blessing”

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.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
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.

—James Wright
—from Selected Poems

WORD(S)

sweven. noun. A dream, a vision. From the Old English swæfn and Old Saxon sweƀan: sleep dream.

“And that was in his slepe by night
This proude king a wonder sight
Had in his sweven there he lay.”
(John Gower)

“And then she said: Sir, hast thou seen the sweven that I have seen? I have seen, said he, that I am greatly amarvelled of, and am sore afraid what we shall do.” (Jacobus de Voragine)

“Send me grace to slepe, and mete
In my slepe som certeyn sweven,
Wher-through that I may knowen even
Whether my lord be quik or deed.” (Chaucer)

“…she cried aloud, ‘Would Heaven I wot if this be on wake or the imbroglio of dreams!’ So she started like one frightened and a moment after she threw herself upon her husband and cried, ‘Say me, do I view thee in vision or really in the flesh?’ whereto he replied, ‘In the world of sense and no sweven is this.’” (Richard F. Burton)

WEB

1. The Great Art in Ugly Rooms site.

2. The New York Times and its role in the definition of slang.

3. ► “A Brief Look at Texting and the Internet in Film”.

4. On the Hyper Usage Guide of English or HUGE, a database of “75 usage guides and 123 usage problems in the English language, spanning a period of nearly 250 years.”

5. Today in 2014, Madara Mason and Christopher Miles are wed in Leroy, Minnesota. See Madara’s paintings. Read some of Christopher’s poems.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Readers V. and S. wrote to correct my pronunciation of flâneur. I’m not going to attempt it again (though, in my defense, I hear it right in my otherwise-mostly-wrong head)! Instead, you can hear it for yourself.

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