American Life in Poetry: Column 066 BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Some of the most telling poetry being written in our country
today has to do with the smallest and briefest of pleasures.
Here Marie Howe of New York captures a magical moment:
sitting in the shelter of a leafy tree with the rain falling all around.


The Copper Beech

Immense, entirely itself,
it wore that yard like a dress,

with limbs low enough for me to enter it
and climb the crooked ladder to where

I could lean against the trunk and practice being alone.
One day, I heard the sound before I saw it, rain fell
darkening the sidewalk.

Sitting close to the center, not very high in the branches,
I heard it hitting the high leaves, and I was happy,

watching it happen without it happening to me.


Reprinted from "What the Living Do," W. W. Norton & Co., 1997. Copyright (c) 1997 by Marie Howe. 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. ******************************

American Life in Poetry: Column 065

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Visiting a familiar and once dear place after a long absence can knock the words right out of us, and in this poem, Keith
Althaus of Massachusetts observes this happening to someone else. I like the way he suggests, at the end, that it may take days before that silence heals over.


Homecoming

We drove through the gates
into a maze of little roads,
with speed bumps now,
that circled a pavilion,
field house, and ran past
the playing fields and wound
their way up to the cluster
of wood and stone buildings
of the school you went to once.
The green was returning to
the trees and lawn, the lake
was still half-lidded with ice
and blind in the middle.
There was nobody around
except a few cars in front
of the administration. It must
have been spring break.
We left without ever getting out
of the car. You were quiet
that night, the next day,
the way after heavy rain
that the earth cannot absorb,
the water lies in pools
in unexpected places for days
until it disappears.


Reprinted from "Ladder of HoursPoems 1969-2005," Ausable Press, Keene, N.Y., 2005, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2005 by Keith Althaus. 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. ******************************

American Life in Poetry: Column 064

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Storytelling binds the past and present together, and is as essential to community life as are food and shelter. Many of our poets are masters at reshaping family stories as poetry. Here Lola Haskins retells a haunting tale, cast in the voice of an elder. Like the best stories, there are no inessential details. Every word counts toward the effect.


Grandmother Speaks of the Old Country

That year there were many deaths in the village.
Germs flew like angels from one house to the next
and every family gave up its own. Mothers
died at their mending. Children fell at school.
Of three hundred twenty, there were eleven left.
Then, quietly, the sun set on a day when no one
died. And the angels whispered among themselves.
And that evening, as he sat on the stone steps,
your grandfather felt a small wind on his neck
when all the trees were still. And he would tell us
always, how he had felt that night, on the skin
of his own neck, the angels, passing.


Reprinted from "Desire Lines: New and Selected Poems," BOA Editions, 2004, by permission of the author and the publisher. Copyright (c) 2004 by Lola Haskins. 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. ******************************

Ann McNeal

I Am Not the Buddha

The long wait on shore
far from traffic
pause in the drone
between the in-breath
and the out.
Heart-slam the sudden
splash, not for me
but dragonfly who is
or is not there
when ripples
die.

Walking back to the car
I slap a mosquito.
What is written on my hand?
I am not…

Originally published in Right Hand Pointing,
Issue 6, April 2005.

American Life in Poetry: Column 062

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE 2004-2006

Gardeners who've fought Creeping Charlie and 
other unwanted plants may sympathize with 
James McKean from Iowa as he takes on Bindweed, 
a cousin to the two varieties of morning glory 
that appear in the poem. It's an endless struggle, 
and in the end, of course, the bindweed wins.


Bindweed

There is little I can do
besides stoop to pluck them
one by one from the ground,
their roots all weak links,
this hoard of Lazaruses popping up
at night, not the Heavenly Blue
so like silk handkerchiefs,
nor the Giant White so timid
in the face of the moon,
but poor relations who visit
then stay. They sleep in my garden.
Each morning I evict them.
Each night more arrive, their leaves
small, green shrouds,
reminding me the mother root
waits deep underground
and I dig but will never find her
and her children will inherit
all that I've cleared
when she holds me tighter
and tighter in her arms.


Reprinted from "Headlong," University of Utah Press, 
1987, by permission of the author, and first published 
in "Poetry Northwest," Vol. 23, No. 3, 1982. Copyright 
(c) 1982 by James McKean, whose most recent book is 
"Home Stand," a memoir published in 2005 by Michigan 
State University Press. 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.

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