American Life in Poetry: Column 014 

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE 

Often everyday experiences provide poets
with inspiration. Here Georgiana Cohen 
observes a woman looking out her window 
and compares the woman to the sunset. The 
woman's "slumped" chin, the fence that 
separates them, and the "beached" cars set 
the poem's tone; this is clearly not a 
celebration of the neighborhood. Yet by 
turning to clouds, sky, and breath, Cohen 
underscores the scene's fragile grace. 


Old Woman in a Housecoat

An old woman in
a floor-length housecoat
has become sunset
to me, west-facing.
Turquoise, sage, or rose,
she leans out of her
second floor window,
chin slumped in her palm,
and gazes at the
fenced property line
between us, the cars
beached in the driveway,
the creeping slide of
light across shingles.
When the window shuts,
dusk becomes blush and
bruises, projected
on vinyl siding.
Housecoats breathe across
the sky like frail clouds.

Reprinted from "Cream City Review," 2004, 
by permission of the author, a writer and 
journalist living in Boston. Â Poem 
copyright 2004 by Georgiana Cohen. 
This weekly column is supported by The Poetry 
Foundation, The Library of Congress, and 
the Department of English at the University 
of Nebraska, Lincoln. This column does not 
accept unsolicited poetry.