Just Off the Highway, Wonder!

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.

This is surely one of the most magical poems in all of American poetry.  The scene is idyllic, and the language is simple, yet richly evocative.  But most magical is the way it moves:  On a highway near Rochester, Minnesota, twilight and two Indian ponies bound toward two men who go to meet them, stepping over a barbed wire fence.  Once they are inside the fence, they are enfolded in a world that is utterly welcoming.  As the narrator moves toward the ponies and they toward him, their kinship grows deeper and deeper so that by the end of the poem the narrator feels that he has become a part of the natural world—he bends to the whim of a breeze like a tree and feels as though he might “break into blossom.”

He feels a sense of emotion, almost a love like that a man might have for a woman as he meets the pony:  He wants to embrace her.  He caresses her.  Her skin is like that of a young girl.

                The poem is filled with words rich in positive connotation:  blessing, kindness, welcome, happiness, caress, nuzzled, delicate, softly, gladly, shyly, blossom.  What a sense of warmth and comfort these words convey.

                I hesitate to make any statement about meaning with a poem like this.  My instinct says just let it say whatever it says to each reader.  But I will say this:  there are two worlds here, the world of civilization with its highway and barbed wire fence and the natural world of the ponies and willows and tufts of spring grass.  This poem catches, as only a few poems have managed to do, the sense of oneness with the natural world that humans on rare occasions may experience.