By Russell Gardner

Summer Game

 

Remembering my mother's clothes on the line

Drying in summer sun, playing in the breeze,

And when the clothes weren't there

I'd pitch a rubber ball against the garage

Between the clothes-line posts

With rules about a strike or ball (or

If it hit the clothes-line post) where

My mythical opponent-playmate would

Send that ball off his bat into the oat-field

To the south of the lawn, over the large rosebush,

Maybe even so far that it'd hit into the grassed

Waterway that drained the northwest-lying field

Where Amish children now play when not working.

-originally appeared in Free Verse

 

American Life in Poetry: Column 186

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

Every child can be seen as a miracle, and here Minnesota poet James Lenfestey captures the beautiful mystery of a daughter.


Daughter

A daughter is not a passing cloud, but permanent,
holding earth and sky together with her shadow.
She sleeps upstairs like mystery in a story,
blowing leaves down the stairs, then cold air, then warm.
We who at sixty should know everything, know nothing.
We become dull and disoriented by uncertain weather.
We kneel, palms together, before this blossoming altar.


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 James P. Lenfestey from his most recent book of poetry, "A Cartload of Scrolls," Holy Cow! Press, 2007. Reprinted by permission of the author. 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. 

by Sandra Lindow

October Bread

 

Within the great blue bowl,

I walk, mixing October

with wind in my hair,

light sifting chrysanthemum flower,

chokecherry, chinaberry,

black birds like raisins

tossed in the dough,

this day of leaf and leaven.

 

Some say bread's the staff of life,

but I hold to sun and air.

These last few days before the dark,

I claim what soon will be lost,

kneading the sun, kneading the air,

I bake within my skin

summer's memory, frangible gold.

-originally published in Wisconsin Poets Calendar

American Life in Poetry: Column 185

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

When I was a boy, there were still a few veterans of the Spanish American War, and more of The Great War, or World War I, and now all those have died and those who served in World War II are passing from us, too. Robert Hedin, a Minnesota poet, has written a fine poem about these people.

The Old Liberators

Of all the people in the mornings at the mall,
it's the old liberators I like best,
those veterans of the Bulge, Anzio, or Monte Cassino
I see lost in Automotive or back in Home Repair,
bored among the paints and power tools.
Or the really old ones, the ones who are going fast,
who keep dozing off in the little orchards
of shade under the distant skylights.
All around, from one bright rack to another,
their wives stride big as generals,
their handbags bulging like ripe fruit.
They are almost all gone now,
and with them they are taking the flak
and fire storms, the names of the old bombing runs.
Each day a little more of their memory goes out,
darkens the way a house darkens,
its rooms quietly filling with evening,
until nothing but the wind lifts the lace curtains,
the wind bearing through the empty rooms
the rich far off scent of gardens
where just now, this morning,
light is falling on the wild philodendrons.


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) 1999 by Robert Hedin. Reprinted from "The Old Liberators: New and Selected Poems and Translations," Holy Cow! Press, 1999, by permission of Robert Hedin. 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 184

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

I hope it's not just a guy thing, a delight in the trappings of work. I love this poem by

John Maloney, of Massachusetts, which gives us a close look behind the

 windshields of all those pickup trucks we see heading home from work.


After Work

They're heading home with their lights on, dust and wood glue,
yellow dome lights on their metallic long beds: 250s, 2500s--
as much overtime as you want, deadline, dotted line, dazed
through the last few hours, dried primer on their knuckles,
sawdust calf-high on their jeans, scraped boots, the rough
plumbing and electric in, way ahead of the game except for
the check, such a clutter of cans and iced-tea bottles, napkins,
coffee cups, paper plates on the front seat floor with cords
and saws, tired above the eyes, back of the beyond, thirsty.
There's a parade of them through the two-lane highways,
proudest on their way home, the first turn out of the jobsite,
the first song with the belt off, pure breath of being alone
for now, for now the insight of a full and answerable man.
No one can take away the contentment of the first few miles
and they know they can't describe it, the black and purple sky.


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 John Maloney, whose most recent

book of poetry is "Proposal," Zoland Books, 1999. Poem reprinted from 

AGNI online, 2/2007, by permission of John Maloney. 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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by Kathleen Ernst

Handwork

 

Scraps of tatting, yellowed with age.

She found time a burden, I think,

the woman who wound thread tight

around her slender fingers;

that childless housewife cradling her shuttle,

silver and small, in her other hand.

As lonely hours knotted, day after day,

she twisted her dreams into neat loops of lace.

 

Hand-knit mittens, Norwegian styling.

She was homesick, I think,

the woman who knit these intricate patterns,

one on the back of hand, one on the palm;

that immigrant clicking her double-point needles,

minding the thumb gusset, minding the fit.

As she hid from the babble of English words

she summoned her own home with memories and wool.

 

Baby blanket, sewn from a flour sack.

She was worried, I think,

the pioneer woman who picked up her needle

with roughened fingers, and leaned toward the fire;

that gaunt young mother, threading her needle,

straining to see with smoke-squint eyes.

As the white wolves of winter loped toward her soddy

she stitched her fear into faded cloth.

 

Tatted and knitted, quilted and sewn.

It was handwork, I think, that kept them going

over vast ocean, prairie, and plain –

basting together scraps of their dreams,

     knitting new lives, knotting new hopes.

Women unknowingly seamed together,

finding comfort in cadence and color,

finding solace, each on her own. 

-originally appeared in Fox Cry Review, September, 2008

American Life in Poetry

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

Perhaps you made paper leaves when you were in grade school.  I did.  But are our memories as richly detailed as these by Washington, D.C. poet, Judith Harris?


Gathering Leaves in Grade School

They were smooth ovals,
and some the shade of potatoes--
some had been moth-eaten
or spotted, the maples
were starched, and crackled
like campfire.

We put them under tracing paper
and rubbed our crayons
over them, X-raying
the spread of their bones
and black, veined catacombs.

We colored them green and brown
and orange, and
cut them out along the edges,
labeling them deciduous
or evergreen.

All day, in the stuffy air of the classroom,
with its cockeyed globe,
and nautical maps of ocean floors,
I watched those leaves

lost in their own worlds
flap on the pins of the bulletin boards:
without branches or roots,
or even a sky to hold on to.


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 Judith Harris, whose most recent collection of poems is "The Bad Secret," Louisiana State University Press, 2006. Reprinted from "The Literary Review," Fall 2008, by permission of Judith Harris. 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.