Poetry Group

POEMS OF TED KOOSER,               
 Poet Laureate

          Ted Kooser, the current U.S. poet laureate and winner of last year's Pulitzer Prize in poetry, is a Unitarian Universalist.  Ann & Bill Bushnell will co-lead.  As always,
you are welcome to come and just listen if you wish.

"TED KOOSER'S POETRY OF THE PEOPLE" (UU World article, Winter, 2005) (click here to check it out – live link)

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    Ted Kooser lives in Garland, a very small town in Nebraska.  He has been writing and publishing poetry for 40 years, and is also a retired bank accountant.  Of him, one reviewer says "Great poetry, like Kooser's, like Chekhov's stories, is not sentimental, but it is characterized by a kind of tender wisdom communicated with absolute precision."

    Among his many books of poetry, three stand out:  "Flying at Night" (1985), "Winter Morning Walks" (2000), and "Delights and Shadows" (2004).  In addition, he has written a wonderful guide for the beginning poet, "The Poetry Home Repair Manual" (2005), which can be read with pleasure by anyone interested in writing or reading poetry.

    Here are several poems as samples (and, like potato chips, you cannot stop at three).  Buy some of books or check them out of the library and see for yourself.

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             FLYING AT NIGHT

        Above us stars.  Beneath us constellations.

        Five billion miles away a galaxy dies

        like a snowflake falling on water.  Below us,

        some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,

        snaps on his yard light, pulling his sheds and barn

        back into the little system of his care.

        All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,

        tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.    

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              DECEMBER 29 – WINDY AND COLD

        All night, in gusty winds

        the house has cupped its hands around

        the steady candle of our marriage,

        the two of us braided together in sleep,

        and burning, yes, but slowly,

        give off just enough light so that one of us,

        awakening frightened in darkness,

        can see.

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              STUDENT

        The green shell of his backpack makes him lean

        into wave after wave of responsibility,

        and he swings his stiff arms and cupped hands,

 

        paddling ahead.  He has extended his neck

        to its full length, and his chin, hard as a beak,

        breaks the cold surf.  He's got his baseball cap on

 

        backwards as up he crawls, out of the froth

        of a hangover and onto the sand of the future,

        and lumbers, heavy with hope, into the library.

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      A SPIRAL NOTEBOOK

The bright wire rolls like a porpoise

in and out of the calm blue sea

of the cover, or perhaps like a sleeper

twisting in and out of his dreams,

for it could hold a record of dreams

if you wanted to buy it for that,

though it seems to be meant for

more serious work, with its

college lines and its cover

that states in emphatic white letters,

5 SUBJECT NOTEBOOK.  It seems

a part of growing old is no longer

to have five subjects, each

demanding an equal share of attention,

set apart by brown cardboard dividers,

but instead to stand in a drugstore

and hang on to one subject

a little too long, like this notebook

you weigh in your hands, passing

your fingers over its surfaces

as if it were some kind of wonder.

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     IN JANUARY

Only one cell in the frozen hive of night

is lit, or so it seems to us:

this Vietnamese café, with its oily light,

its odors whose colorful shapes are like flowers.

Laughter and talking, the tick of chopsticks.

Beyond the glass, the wintry city

creaks like an ancient wooden bridge.

A great wind rushes under all of us.

The bigger the window, the more it trembles.

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      A BIRTHDAY POEM

Just past dawn, the sun stands

with its heavy red head

in a black stanchion of trees,

waiting for someone to come

with his bucket

for the foamy white light,

and then a long day in the pasture.

I too spend my days grazing,

feasting on every green moment

till darkness calls,

and with the others

I walk away into the night,

swinging the little tin bell

of my name.

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     AFTER YEARS 

Today, from a distance, I saw you

walking away, and without a sound

the glittering face of a glacier

slid into the sea. An ancient oak

fell in the Cumberlands, holding only

a handful of leaves, and an old woman

scattering corn to her chickens looked up

for an instant. At the other side

of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times

the size of our own sun exploded

and vanished, leaving a small green spot

on the astronomer's retina

as he stood on the great open dome

of my heart with no one to tell. 

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     SELECTING A READER

First, I would have her be beautiful,

and walking carefully up on my poetry

at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,

her hair still damp at the neck

from washing it. She should be wearing

a raincoat, an old one, dirty

from not having money enough for the cleaners.

She will take out her glasses, and there

in the bookstore, she will thumb

over my poems, then put the book back

up on its shelf. She will say to herself,

"For that kind of money, I can get

my raincoat cleaned." And she will.

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     CARRIE

"There's never an end to dust

and dusting," my aunt would say

as her rag, like a thunderhead,

scudded across the yellow oak

of her little house. There she lived

seventy years with a ball

of compulsion closed in her fist,

and an elbow that creaked and popped

like a branch in a storm. Now dust

is her hands and dust her heart.

There's never an end to it.

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     TATTOO

What once was meant to be a statement—

a dripping dagger held in the fist

of a shuddering heart—is now just a bruise

on a bony old shoulder, the spot

where vanity once punched him hard

and the ache lingered on. He looks like

someone you had to reckon with,

strong as a stallion, fast and ornery,

but on this chilly morning, as he walks

between the tables at a yard sale

with the sleeves of his tight black T-shirt

rolled up to show us who he was,

he is only another old man, picking up

broken tools and putting them back,

his heart gone soft and blue with stories.

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     FATHER

Today you would be ninety-seven

if you had lived, and we would all be

miserable, you and your children,

driving from clinic to clinic,

an ancient fearful hypochondriac

and his fretful son and daughter,

asking directions, trying to read

the complicated, fading map of cures.

But with your dignity intact

you have been gone for twenty years,

and I am glad for all of us, although

I miss you every day—the heartbeat

under your necktie, the hand cupped

on the back of my neck, Old Spice

in the air, your voice delighted with stories.

On this day each year you loved to relate

that the moment of your birth

your mother glanced out the window

and saw lilacs in bloom. Well, today

lilacs are blooming in side yards

all over Iowa, still welcoming you.

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     AT THE CANCER CLINIC

She is being helped toward the open door

that leads to the examining rooms

by two young women I take to be her sisters.

Each bends to the weight of an arm

and steps with the straight, tough bearing

of courage. At what must seem to be

a great distance, a nurse holds the door,

smiling and calling encouragement.

How patient she is in the crisp white sails

of her clothes. The sick woman

peers from under her funny knit cap

to watch each foot swing scuffing forward

and take its turn under her weight.

There is no restlessness or impatience

or anger anywhere in sight. Grace

fills the clean mold of this moment

and all the shuffling magazines grow still.

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     SKATER

She was all in black but for a yellow pony tail

that trailed from her cap, and bright blue gloves

that she held out wide, the feathery fingers spread,

as surely she stepped, click-clack, onto the frozen

top of the world. And there, with a clatter of blades,

she began to braid a loose path that broadened

into a meadow of curls. Across the ice she swooped

and then turned back and, halfway, bent her legs

and leapt into the air the way a crane leaps, blue gloves

lifting her lightly, and turned a snappy half-turn

there in the wind before coming down, arms wide,

skating backward right out of that moment, smiling back

at the woman she'd been just an instant before.