American Life in Poetry: Column 087

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

The first poem we ran in this column was by
David Allan Evans of South Dakota, about a couple
washing windows together. You can find that poem
and all the others on our website,
www.americanlifeinpoetry.org. Here Tania Rochelle
of Georgia presents us with another couple, this time
raking leaves. I especially like the image of the pair
"bent like parentheses/ around their brittle little
lawn."

Raking

Anna Bell and Lane, eighty,
make small leaf piles in the heat,
each pile a great joint effort,
like fifty years of marriage,
sharing chores a rusty dance.
In my own yard, the stacks
are big as children, who scatter them,
dodge and limbo the poke
of my rake. We're lucky,
young and straight-boned.
And I feel sorry for the couple,
bent like parentheses
around their brittle little lawn.
I like feeling sorry for them,
the tenderness of it, but only
for a moment: John glides in
like a paper airplane, takes
the children for the weekend,
and I remember,
they're the lucky ones--
shriveled Anna Bell, loving
her crooked Lane.

Reprinted from "Karaoke Funeral," Snake Nation Press, 
2003, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2003  
by Tania Rochelle.  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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American Life in Poetry: Column 086
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Linda Pastan, who lives in Maryland, is a 
master of the kind of water-clear writing that 
enables us to see into the depths. This is a  
poem about migrating birds, but also about how 
it feels to witness the passing of another year.

The Birds

are heading south, pulled
by a compass in the genes.
They are not fooled
by this odd November summer,
though we stand in our doorways
wearing cotton dresses.
We are watching them

as they swoop and gather--
the shadow of wings
falls over the heart.
When they rustle among
the empty branches, the trees
must think their lost leaves
have come back.

The birds are heading south,
instinct is the oldest story.
They fly over their doubles,
the mute weathervanes,
teaching all of us
with their tailfeathers
the true north.

Reprinted from "The Imperfect Paradise," 
by Linda Pastan. Copyright (c) 1988 by Linda Pastan.
With permission of the publisher,  W.W. Norton &
Company, Inc. Ms. Pastan's most recent book is
"Queen of a  Rainy Country," W.W. Norton & Company,
Inc., 2006.   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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American Life in Poetry: Column 085

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
The Illinois poet, Lisel Mueller, is one of our country's finest writers,
and the following lines, with their grace and humility, are representative
of her poems of quiet celebration.


In November

Outside the house the wind is howling
and the trees are creaking horribly.
This is an old story
with its old beginning,
as I lay me down to sleep.
But when I wake up, sunlight
has taken over the room.
You have already made the coffee
and the radio brings us music
from a confident age. In the paper
bad news is set in distant places.
Whatever was bound to happen
in my story did not happen.
But I know there are rules that cannot be broken.
Perhaps a name was changed.
A small mistake. Perhaps
a woman I do not know
is facing the day with the heavy heart
that, by all rights, should have been mine.


Reprinted from "Alive Together: New and Selected Poems,"
Louisiana State University Press, 1996, by permission of the
author. Poem copyright (c) 1996 by Lisel Mueller. 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 084  
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Many of this column's readers have watched 
an amaryllis emerge from its hard bulb to flower. 
To me they seem unworldly, perhaps a little dangerous, 
like a wild bird you don't want to get too close to. 
Here Connie Wanek of Duluth, Minnesota, takes a close  
and playful look at an amaryllis that looks right back  at her.


Amaryllis

A flower needs to be this size
to conceal the winter window,
and this color, the red
of a Fiat with the top down,
to impress us, dull as we've grown.

Months ago the gigantic onion of a bulb
half above the soil
stuck out its green tongue
and slowly, day by day,
the flower itself entered our world,

closed, like hands that captured a moth,
then open, as eyes open,
and the amaryllis, seeing us,
was somehow undiscouraged.
It stands before us now

as we eat our soup;
you pour a little of your drinking water
into its saucer, and a few crumbs
of fragrant earth fall
onto the tabletop.


Reprinted from "Bonfire," New Rivers Press, 1997,
by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 1997
by Connie Wanek. Her most recent book is "Hartley Field,"
from Holy Cow! Press, 2002. 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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