American Life in Poetry: Column 105

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

I've talked often in this column about how
poetry can hold a mirror up tolife, and I'm
especially fond of poems that hold those mirrors
up to our most ordinary activities, showing them
at their best and brightest. Here Ruth Moose
hangs out some laundry and, in an instant, an
everyday chore that might have seemed to us
to be quite plain is fresh and lovely.

Laundry

All our life
so much laundry;
each day's doing or not
comes clean,
flows off and away
to blend with other sins
of this world. Each day
begins in new skin,
blessed by the elements
charged to take us
out again to do or undo
what's been assigned.
From socks to shirts
the selves we shed
lift off the line
as if they own
a life apart
from the one we offer.
There is joy in clean laundry.
All is forgiven in water, sun
and air. We offer our day's deeds
to the blue-eyed sky, with soap and prayer,
our arms up, then lowered in supplication.

Reprinted from "Making the Bed," Main Street
Rag Press, 2004, by permission of the author.
Copyright (c) 1995 by Ruth Moose, whose latest
book of poetry, "The Sleepwalker," Main Street
Rag, due out in 2007. 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 104  
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

At some time many of us will have to make a last visit   
to a house where aged parents lived out their days.  
Here Marge Saiser beautifully compresses one such farewell.

Where They Lived

One last time I unlock
the house where they lived

and fought and tried again:
the air of the place,

carpet with its unchanging green,
chair with its back to me.

On the TV set, the Christmas cactus
has bloomed, has spilled its pink flowers

down its scraggly arms
and died, drying into paper.

At the round oak table,
ghosts lean toward one another,

almost a bow, before rising,
before ambling away.

Reprinted by permission of Marjorie Saiser,  
whose most recent book of poems is "Lost in Seward County,"
Backwaters Press, 2001.  Copyright (c) 2006 by Marjorie Saiser.  
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 Andrea Potos  

GOSSIP

She enjoyed it as much as cooking or eating.   
It was an important part of living.--      
                   Marie Giordano

Didn¹t the grandmothers convene
at their kitchen tables, fingers patting

floral oilcloths as they sipped
their percolated coffee swirling

with crumbs of toast and cake,
as they spoke

of what could not be contained:
the news, like love, that must be shared,

the hunger and loneliness at the root
quelled,

the confirming replies:
Ah, ah.

from Yaya's Cloth (Iris Press)

American Life in Poetry: Column 102

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

Those of us who have hunted morel mushrooms
in the early spring have hunted indeed! The
morel is among nature's most elusive species.
Here  Jane Whitledge of Minnesota captures the
morel's mysterious ways.

Morel Mushrooms

Softly they come
thumbing up from
firm ground

protruding unharmed.
Easily crumbled
and yet

how they shouldered
the leaf and mold
aside, rising

unperturbed,
breathing obscurely,
still as stone.

By the slumping log,
by the dappled aspen,
they grow alone.

A dumb eloquence
seems their trade.
Like hooded monks

in a sacred wood
they say:
Tomorrow we are gone.

Reprinted from "Wilderness Magazine," Spring, 
1993, by permission of the author. Copyright (c)  
1993 by Jane Whitledge. 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 Andrea Potos 
HOW THE WRITING CHANGES

The words start out small, tidy--
grids on a streetmap,
suburban houses where families
sit down to meat loaf and potatoes,
and the mother always serves herself last.
Then, as she rises to wipe the table,
she looks past her husband¹s mute face
to the clearing
through the kitchen window, the sky
burning to dusk and fireflies lifting
their lit bodies from the grass.
She opens the back door and heads for the stream
whose water she has heard in her sleep
for the flowing that leads to the river
where the white water rushes.

-from Yaya's Cloth (Iris Press, 2007).

American Life in Poetry: Column 101

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

Those big cherry flavored wax lips
that my friends and I used to buy when I
was a boy, well, how could I resist this
poem by Cynthia Rylant of Oregon?

Wax Lips

Todd's Hardware was dust and a monkey--
a real one, on the second floor--
and Mrs. Todd there behind the glass cases.
We stepped over buckets of nails and lawnmowers
to get to the candy counter in the back,
and pointed at the red wax lips,
and Mary Janes,
and straws full of purple sugar.
Said goodbye to Mrs. Todd, she white-faced and silent,
and walked the streets of Beaver,
our teeth sunk hard in the wax,
and big red lips worth kissing.

"Wax Lips" by Cynthia Rylant from WAITING TO WALTZ.  
Copyright (c) 2001 by Cynthia Rylant. Reprinted with  
permission of the author, whose most recent 
book of poetry is "Ludie's Life," Harcourt, 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.  
******************************