American Life in Poetry: Column 091

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

How many of us, when passing through some small town, have felt that it seemed familiar though we've never been there before. And of course it seems familiar because much of the course of life is pretty much the same wherever we go, right down to the up-and-down fortunes of the football team and the unanswered love letters. Here's a poem by Mark Vinz.

Driving Through

This could be the town you're from,
marked only by what it's near.
The gas station man speaks of weather
and the high school football team
just as you knew he would--
kind to strangers, happy to live here.

Tell yourself it doesn't matter now,
you're only driving through.
Past the sagging, empty porches
locked up tight to travelers' stares,
toward the great dark of the fields,
your headlights startle a flock of
old love letters--still undelivered,
enroute for years.

Reprinted from "Red River Blues," published
by College of the Mainland, Texas City, TX, 1977,
by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 1977
by Mark Vinz, whose most recent book is "Long Distance,"
Midwestern Writers Publishing House, 2005.
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.

by Jo Balistreri

Ancient Ritual

Dad, in his long blue robe
and thinning steel-gray hair
enters the spotless kitchen
in worn-slippered feet.
Shadowed dawn
announces its presence,
releases the closed petals
of sleep to the templed rhythm
of a new day.
Dad carefully opens the cupboard,
reverently holds a cherry blossom
plate. Setting the breakfast table
he gently places each porcelain dish
of boyhood, creates a spring
garden at each setting, forever green,
its branched blooms reaching
toward light.
A Buddhist monk, he walks
within his life treading slow measured steps,
gives attention to each detail
as if it were new.
He pours the brewed tea,
watches the waterfall pool
in the bone-thin cups, follows the steam
as it drifts upward like incense.

I smile to myself--am silent, aware
of this ancient rite of morning, watch
him walk to the draped window
to pull open the day. For a moment,
he will stand enfolded in mountain sun,
before he turns to me and says,
“Isn’t it fine.”

-originally appeared in Bellowing Ark

American Life in Poetry: Column 090

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

Anyone can write a poem that nobody can understand,
but poetry is a means of communication, and this
column specializes in poems that communicate. What
comes more naturally to us than to instruct someone
in how to do something? Here the Minnesota poet and
essayist Bill Holm, who is of Icelandic parentage,
shows us how to make something delicious to eat.

Bread Soup: An Old Icelandic Recipe

Start with the square heavy loaf
steamed a whole day in a hot spring
until the coarse rye, sugar, yeast
grow dense as a black hole of bread.
Let it age and dry a little,
then soak the old loaf for a day
in warm water flavored
with raisins and lemon slices.
Boil it until it is thick as molasses.
Pour it in a flat white bowl.
Ladle a good dollop of whipped cream
to melt in its brown belly.
This soup is alive as any animal,
and the yeast and cream and rye
will sing inside you after eating
for a long time.

Reprinted from "Playing the Black Piano," 
Milkweed Editions, 2004, by permission of the author.
Copyright (c) 2004  by Bill Holm.  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 089

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

Loss can defeat us or serve as the impetus for  
positive change. Here, Sue Ellen Thompson of 
Connecticut shows us how to mourn inevitable changes,  
tuck the memories away, then go on to see the  
possibility of a new and promising chapter in one's life.

No Children, No Pets

I bring the cat's body home from the vet's
in a running-shoe box held shut
with elastic bands. Then I clean
the corners where she has eaten and
slept, scrubbing the hard bits of food
from the baseboard, dumping the litter
and blasting the pan with a hose. The plastic
dishes I hide in the basement, the pee-
soaked towel I put in the trash. I put
the catnip mouse in the box and I put
the box away, too, in a deep
dirt drawer in the earth.

When the death-energy leaves me,
I go to the room where my daughter slept
in nursery school, grammar school, high school,
I lie on her milky bedspread and think
of the day I left her at college, how nothing
could keep me from gouging the melted candle-wax
out from between her floorboards,
or taking a razor blade to the decal
that said to the firemen, "Break
this window first." I close my eyes now
and enter a place that's clearly
expecting me, swaddled in loss
and then losing that, too, as I move
from room to bone-white room
in the house of the rest of my life.

Reprinted from "Nimrod International Journal: 
The Healing Arts," Vol. 49, No. 2, Spring-Summer, 2006, 
by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2006
by Sue Ellen Thompson, whose latest book is
"The Golden Hour,"  Autumn House Press, 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 088

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

This wistful poem by Christopher Chambers
shows how the familiar and the odd, the real
and imaginary, exist side by side. A Midwestern
father transforms himself  from a staid
businessman into a rock-n-roll star, reclaiming
a piece of his imaginary youth. In  the end,
it shows how fragile moments might be  recovered
to offer a glimpse into our inner lives.

My Father Holds the Door for Yoko Ono

In New York City for a conference
on weed control, leaving the hotel
in a cluster of horticulturalists,
he alone stops, midwestern, crewcut,
narrow blue tie, cufflinks, wingtips,
holds the door for the Asian woman
in a miniskirt and thigh high
white leather boots. She nods
slightly, a sad and beautiful gesture.
Neither smile, as if performing
a timeless ritual, as if anticipating
the loss of a son or a lover.

Years later, Christmas, inexplicably
he dons my mother's auburn wig,
my brother's wire-rimmed glasses,
and strikes a pose clowning
with my second hand acoustic guitar.
He is transformed, a working class hero
and a door whispers shut,
like cherry blossoms falling.

Reprinted from "Folio," Winter, 2004, 
by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2004
by Christopher Chambers, who  teaches creative
writing at Loyola University New Orleans. 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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