American Life in Poetry: Column 135  
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

What motivates us to keep moving forward through 
our lives, despite all the effort required to do 
so? Here, North Carolina poet Ruth Moose attributes 
human characteristics to an animal to speculate 
upon what that force might be.

The Crossing

The snail at the edge of the road
inches forward, a trim gray finger
of a fellow in pinstripe suit.
He's burdened by his house
that has to follow
where he goes. Every inch,
he pulls together
all he is,
all he owns,
all he was given.

The road is wide
but he is called
by something
that knows him
on the other side.

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) 2004 by Ruth 
Moose, whose most recent book of poetry is "The 
Sleepwalker," Main Street Rag, 2007. Reprinted from 
"75 Poems on Retirement," edited by Robin Chapman  
and Judith Strasser, published by University of Iowa
Press, 2007, by permission of the author and publisher. 
Introduction copyright (c) 2007 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 134

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

When ancient people gathered around the fire at nightfall, I like to think that they told stories, about where each of them had been that day, and what that person had seen in the forest. Those were among our first stories, and we still venture into the world and return to tell others what happened. It's part of community. Here Kathleen Flenniken of Washington tells us about a woman she saw at an airport.

Old Woman With Protea Flowers, Kahalui Airport

She wears the run-down slippers of a local
and in her arms, five rare protea
wrapped in newsprint, big as digger pine cones.
Our hands can't help it and she lets us touch.
Her brother grows them for her, upcountry.
She's spending the day on Oahu
with her flowers and her dogs. Protea
for four dogs' graves, two for her favorite.
She'll sit with him into the afternoon
and watch the ocean from Koolau.
An old woman's paradise, she tells us,
and pets the flowers' soft, pink ears.

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) 2007 by Kathleen Flenniken, whose most recent book of poetry is "Famous," University of Nebraska Press, 2006. Poem reprinted by permission of the author. Introduction copyright (c) 2007 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 133 BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

It may be that we are most alone when attending funerals, at least that's how it seems to me. By alone I mean that even among throngs of mourners we pull back within ourselves and peer out at life as if through a window. David
Baker, an Ohio poet, offers us a picture of a funeral that could be anybody's.

Afterwards

A short ride in the van, then the eight of us
there in the heat--white shirtsleeves sticking,
the women's gloves off--fanning our faces.
The workers had set up a big blue tent

to help us at graveside tolerate the sun,
which was brutal all afternoon as if
stationed above us, though it moved limb
to limb through two huge, covering elms.

The long processional of neighbors, friends,
the town's elderly, her beauty-shop patrons,
her club's notables. . . The world is full of
prayers arrived at from afterwards, he said.

Look up through the trees--the hands, the leaves
curled as in self-control or quietly hurting,
or now open, flat-palmed, many-fine-veined,
and whether from heat or sadness, waving.

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) by David Baker, whose most recent book of poetry is "Midwest Eclogue," W. W. Norton, 2006. Reprinted from "Virginia Quarterly Review," Winter, 2004, by permission of David Baker. Introduction copyright (c) 2007 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 132

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

Children at play give personalities to lifeless objects, and we don't need to give up that pleasure as we grow older. Poets are good at discerning life within what otherwise might seem lifeless. Here the poet Peter Pereira, a family physician in the Seattle area, contemplates a smiling statue, and in that moment of contemplation the smile is given by the statue to the man.

The Garden Buddha

Gift of a friend, the stone Buddha sits zazen,
prayer beads clutched in his chubby fingers.
Through snow, icy rain, the riot of spring flowers,
he gazes forward to the city in the distance--always

the same bountiful smile upon his portly face.
Why don't I share his one-minded happiness?
The pear blossom, the crimson-petaled magnolia,
filling me instead with a mixture of nostalgia

and yearning. He's laughing at me, isn't he?
The seasons wheeling despite my photographs
and notes, my desire to make them pause.
Is that the lesson? That stasis, this holding on,

is not life? Now I'm smiling, too--the late cherry,
its soft pink blossoms already beginning to scatter;
the trillium, its three-petaled white flowers
exquisitely tinged with purple as they fall.

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) by Peter Pereira. Reprinted from "What's Written on the Body" by Peter Pereira, Copper Canyon Press, 2007, by permission of the author and publisher. Introduction copyright (c) 2007 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. ******************************