by Robin Chapman

Dailiness 

It is the birds
        who call me back 
              to the world

Animation of sparrows
        among arbor vitae branches
              in my morning dash with the dog

Brief glimpse of geese
        crying their ragged way across sky 
              as I wait in traffic

Waxwings busy
        stripping the small red crabapples 
              beside my office building's door

Crows calling after me
        as I leave, pay attention, pay 
              attention, pay attention

To what is slipping away.

Copyright © 2009 Robin Chapman All rights reserved
from Abundance 
Cider Press 

American Life in Poetry: Column 193

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

The first two lines of this poem pose a question many of us may have thought about: how does snow make silence even more silent? And notice Robert Haight's deft use of color, only those few flecks of red, and the rest of the poem pure white. And silent, so silent. Haight lives in Michigan, where people know about snow.

How Is It That the Snow

How is it that the snow

amplifies the silence,

slathers the black bark on limbs,

heaps along the brush rows?

Some deer have stood on their hind legs

to pull the berries down.

Now they are ghosts along the path,

snow flecked with red wine stains.

This silence in the timbers.

A woodpecker on one of the trees

taps out its story,

stopping now and then in the lapse

of one white moment into another.

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) 2002 by Robert Haight from his most recent book of poetry, "Emergences and Spinner Falls," New Issues Poetry and Prose, 2002. Reprinted by permission of Robert Haight. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 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. 

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American Life in Poetry: Column 204

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

Memories form around details the way a pearl forms around a grain of sand, and in this commemoration of an anniversary, Cecilia Woloch reaches back to grasp a few details that promise to bring a cherished memory forward, and succeeds in doing so. The poet lives and teaches in southern California.

Anniversary

Didn't I stand there once,

white-knuckled, gripping the just-lit taper,

swearing I'd never go back?

And hadn't you kissed the rain from my mouth?

And weren't we gentle and awed and afraid,

knowing we'd stepped from the room of desire

into the further room of love?

And wasn't it sacred, the sweetness

we licked from each other's hands?

And were we not lovely, then, were we not

as lovely as thunder, and damp grass, and flame?

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) 2008 by Cecilia Woloch. Reprinted from "Narcissus," by Cecilia Woloch, Tupelo Press, Dorset, VT, 2008, by permission of Cecilia Woloch.  Introduction copyright (c) 2009 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. 

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American Life in Poetry: Column 203

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

To read in the news that a platoon of soldiers has been killed is a terrible thing, but to learn the name of just one of them makes the news even more vivid and sad. To hold the name of someone or something on our lips is a powerful thing. It is the badge of individuality and separateness. Charles Harper Webb, a California poet, takes advantage of the power of naming in this poem about the steady extinction of animal species.

The Animals are Leaving

One by one, like guests at a late party

They shake our hands and step into the dark:

Arabian ostrich; Long-eared kit fox; Mysterious starling.

One by one, like sheep counted to close our eyes, 

They leap the fence and disappear into the woods: 

Atlas bear; Passenger pigeon; North Island laughing owl; 

Great auk; Dodo; Eastern wapiti; Badlands bighorn sheep.

One by one, like grade school friends,

They move away and fade out of memory:

Portuguese ibex; Blue buck; Auroch; Oregon bison;

Spanish imperial eagle; Japanese wolf; Hawksbill

Sea turtle; Cape lion; Heath hen; Raiatea thrush.

One by one, like children at a fire drill, they march 

    outside,

And keep marching, though teachers cry, "Come back!"

Waved albatross; White-bearded spider monkey;

Pygmy chimpanzee; Australian night parrot;

Turquoise parakeet; Indian cheetah; Korean tiger;

Eastern harbor seal; Ceylon elephant; Great Indian 

    rhinoceros.

One by one, like actors in a play that ran for years

And wowed the world, they link their hands and bow

Before the curtain falls.

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 Charles Harper Webb. Reprinted from "Amplified Dog," by Charles Harper Webb, published by Red Hen Press, 2006, by permission of the author and publisher.  Introduction copyright (c) 2009 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. 

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