The following poem (revised slightly since) appeared in issue #65 (spring 2010) of Willow Springs, along with works by Matt Bell, Diana Joseph, Laura Kasischke, David Wojahn, Gary Copeland Lilley, and Robert Wrigley. Issue #65 also contains a fantastic conversation with Charles Baxter.

A Conversation that Sounds like Me Praying
to the Ghost of James Wright
as if He Were Here in the Passenger Seat
and the Things I Say Might Yet Become
an Annotation to “A Blessing”

There’s only one Indian pony left from the original
two, Jim. Let’s tell whomever asks it’s
the older one who’s gone. Having led the good life
she’s buried now and mingling
with a willow’s roots. Only
there’s no way in hell this pony
behind the fence, three or four miles from Minnesota Lake,
is your pony, is related aside from in the loosest,
evolutionary, begat-from sense.
I’ve chosen to call this pony the pony that’s left
because I’ve come upon it on the road
to Rochester, Minnesota, where each of us ended up
that day my grandfather’s sister, my great aunt, the nun,
led me, my smooth hand in hers, to the commissary
at Mayo. I was the blonde-haired boy
reaching to the vats: skim, whole, two percent—
marvelous! My realization that milk
was not simply milk
was the glee you happened upon
in the beverage line, me
less a boy than an arc of light. Jim, it was my thin wrist
that chose the whole. You could finish
your poem. There never was a delicate girl.