by Alan MacKellar

Sycamore on Parker’s Mill Road

……The beauty of the tree lies in its trunk and
branches, whitish and dappled withgray-green
and tan. Wharton and Barbour,
Trees & Shrubs of Kentucky,
University Press of Kentucky, KY, 1973.

What part of me knows?
The rime of your eyes
must have told me.
I’d brought you a PC
a fucking computer,
for god’s sake,
a trigger at your head. Then
I say, Why don’t you take
some art, some more
dancing classes?

Last year you had it all, I think;
pride of NC School of the Arts,
when Amanda asks you to choose
between me and Stephen,
you choose nine hundred miles,
a motel in Ft. Lauderdale,
a failed slash of wrists.
A week, eight days, no money
you call for help. We choose
an eighteen day miracle
cure at Charter Ridge.
You’re twenty-one,
your folder confidential.

I wear sunglasses
in a darkened room.
Hey, Wimbledon’s
on this weekend,
I say, come on over.
I think you smile.
Count on me, Dad.

At ninety miles an hour
on the loneliest stretch
of Parker’s Mill Road,
your radio turned full volume,
do you hear that last song?

This time you take
no chances, line yourself
with the broadest tree,
feel the bullet recoil against
your hand then course
through your head, before
the whites of the sycamore,
dappled with gray-green
and tan, turn red.
-First published in Wind

American Life in Poetry: Column 122

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

The chances are very good that you are within a thousand yards of
a man with a comb-over, and he may even be somewhere in your
house. Here's Maine poet, Wesley McNair, with his commentary
on these valorous attempts to disguise hair loss.

Hymn to the Comb-Over

How the thickest of them erupt just
above the ear, cresting in waves so stiff
no wind can move them. Let us praise them
in all of their varieties, some skinny
as the bands of headphones, some rising
from a part that extends halfway around
the head, others four or five strings
stretched so taut the scalp resembles
a musical instrument. Let us praise the sprays
that hold them, and the combs that coax
such abundance to the front of the head
in the mirror, the combers entirely forget
the back. And let us celebrate the combers,
who address the old sorrow of time's passing
day after day, bringing out of the barrenness
of mid-life this ridiculous and wonderful
harvest, no wishful flag of hope, but, thick,
or thin, the flag itself, unfurled for us all
in subways, offices, and malls across America.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also
supported by the Department of English at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2006 by Wesley McNair.
Reprinted from "The Ghosts of You and Me," published by David R.
Godine, 2006, by permission of the author. Introduction copyright
(c) 2006 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author,
Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in
Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept
unsolicited manuscripts.
******************************

by Ellen Saunders

Spring to Spring 

Through seasons passing spring to spring
with diligence I tried to love you more.
In sultry days all I could bring
were wilted summer flowers to your door;
a dying bouquet that once was new
and fresh as a day arising from night,
a time I'd lie entwined with you
and watch the window turn from dark to light.
But here we are in the late of fall
counting the days that shrink and hide
as leaves turn to brown while I recall
their shade in summer before they died
and still I cannot love you anymore
than I did when winter came before.

-originally appeared in The Lyric

by Felecia Caton Garcia

El Mozote, El Salvador, 1992

The afternoon rain rinses the small hand bones
of children. The archeologists lift stiff brushes

and carve the earth. Skeletal fingers clutch
a small orange plastic horse. Stiff brushes

clenched in their hands, they sift the red dust.
They whisper the names of the bones: tibia, metatarsal,

vertebrae. I want to send death begging on a train,
far from here and hungry. How far could death

get on an orange plastic horse? All around me
is the song of common words: mirror, comb, child’s shoe.

We are here to discover what happened then,
but I want to know what happens now.

The gray sky is a stroke of luck. My fingers
clutch the small hand bones of children.

-originally appeared in The Indiana Review

American Life in Poetry: Column 119

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

I'm especially attracted to poems that describe places I might not otherwise visit, in the manner of good travel writing. I'm a dedicated stay-at-home and much prefer to read something fascinating about a place than visit it myself. Here the Hawaii poet, Joseph Stanton, describes a tree that few of us have seen but all of us have eaten from.

Banana Trees

They are tall herbs, really, not trees,
though they can shoot up thirty feet
if all goes well for them. Cut in cross

section they look like gigantic onions,
multi-layered mysteries with ghostly hearts.
Their leaves are made to be broken by the wind,

if wind there be, but the crosswise tears
they are built to expect do them no harm.
Around the steady staff of the leafstalk

the broken fronds flap in the breeze
like brief forgotten flags, but these
tattered, green, photosynthetic machines

know how to grasp with their broken fingers
the gold coins of light that give open air
its shine. In hot, dry weather the fingers

fold down to touch on each side--
a kind of prayer to clasp what damp they can
against the too much light.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2006 by Joseph Stanton. Reprinted from "A Field Guide to the Wildlife of Suburban O'ahu," Time Being Books, 2006, with permission of the publisher. Introduction copyright (c) 2006 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. ******************************

American Life in Poetry: Column 118

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

Our species has developed monstrous weapons that can kill not only all of us but everything else on the planet, yet when the wind rises we run for cover, as we have done for as long as we've been on this earth. Here's hoping we never have the skill or arrogance to conquer the weather. And weather stories? We tell them in the same way our ancestors related encounters with fearsome dragons. This poem by Minnesota poet Warren Woessner honors the tradition by sharing an experience with a hurricane.

Alberto

When the wind clipped
the whitecaps, and the flags
came down before they shredded,
we knew it was no nor'easter.
The Blue Nose ferry stayed
on course, west out of Yarmouth,
while 100 miles of fog
on the Bay blew away.

The Captain let us stand
on the starboard bridge
and scan a jagged range.
Shearwaters skimmed the peaks
while storm petrels hunted valleys
that slowly filled with gold.
Alberto blew out in the Atlantic.
We came back to earth
that for days might tip and sway
and cast us back to sea.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 1998 by Warren Woessner, whose book of poetry, "Clear All the Rest of the Way" is forthcoming from The Backwaters Press. Reprinted from "Iris Rising," BkMk Press of UMKC, 1998, with permission of the author. Introduction copyright (c) 2006 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. ******************************