Wind seems to feel

When it slips fingers into the it.

Of lovely things men made.

The shoulders of a stone girl

Pitted by winter.

The "stone girl" floats in and out of the poem until she becomes a face Wright remembers, while the wind, which one would expect to triumph at the end, fades out like a dream scene. The reverse is central to the poem, and Wright makes it universal simply by allowing it to grow larger than the words. Similarly, in "Wherever Home Is," he allows a statue of Leonardo da Vinci to filter into his mind and emerge uncontrollable on paper. He relishes the flavor of da Vinci's life and the historical impression he is left with: affectionately he calls Leonardo a "madman" and wanders off in the sun with the artist. The last stanza is memorable:

Goodbye to Leonardo, good riddance

To decaying madmen who cannot keep alive

The wanderers among trees.

I am going home with the lizard.

Wherever home is.

And lie beside him unguarded

In the clear sunlight

We will lift our faces even if it rains.

We will both turn green.

It seems remarkable that such a cohesive collection of poems was released after Wright's death--however, it is worth nothing that the manuscript was virtually complete when he died in 1980. The poems seem to have been written by someone who knew he would die, but they convey an appreciation of life that is at once quiet and fierce, a rare zeal that comes only from knowing life well.