American Life in Poetry: Column 322

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

Cathy Smith Bowers was recently appointed poet laureate of North Carolina, and I want to celebrate her appointment by showing you one of her lovely poems, a peaceful poem about a peaceful thing.

Peace Lilies

I collect them now, it seems. Like
sea-shells or old
thimbles. One for
Father. One for

Mother. Two for my sweet brothers.
Odd how little
they require of
me. Unlike the

ones they were sent in memory
of. No sudden
shrilling of the
phone. No harried

midnight flights. Only a little
water now and
then. Scant food and
light. See how I’ve

brought them all together here in
this shaded space
beyond the stairs.
Even when they

thirst, they summon me with nothing
more than a soft,
indifferent furl-
ing of their leaves.

 
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2004 by Cathy Smith Bowers, whose most recent book of poetry is The Candle I Hold Up to See You, Iris Press, 2009. Poem reprinted from A Book of Minutes, Iris Press, 2004, by permission of Cathy Smith Bowers and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2011 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 321

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

For me, the most worthwhile poetry is that which reaches out and connects with a great number of people, and this one, by Joe Mills of North Carolina, does just that. Every parent gets questions like the one at the center of this poem.

How You Know
 
How do you know if it’s love? she asks,
and I think if you have to ask, it’s not,
but I know this won’t help. I want to say
you’re too young to worry about it,
as if she has questions about Medicare
or social security, but this won’t help either.
“You’ll just know” is a lie, and one truth,
“when you still want to be with them
the next morning,” would involve too
many follow-up questions. The difficulty
with love, I want to say, is sometimes
you only know afterwards that it’s arrived
or left. Love is the elephant and we
are the blind mice unable to understand
the whole. I want to say love is this
desire to help even when I know I can’t,
just as I couldn’t explain electricity, stars,
the color of the sky, baldness, tornadoes,
fingernails, coconuts, or the other things
she has asked about over the years, all
those phenomena whose daily existence
seems miraculous. Instead I shake my head.
I don’t even know how to match my socks.
Go ask your mother. She laughs and says,
I did. Mom told me to come and ask you.

American Life in Poetry: Column 320

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

When I was a little boy, the fear of polio hung over my summers, keeping me away from the swimming pool. Atomic energy was then in its infancy. It had defeated Japan and seemed to be America’s friend. Jehanne Dubrow, who lives and teaches in Maryland, is much younger than I, and she grew up under the fearsome cloud of what atomic energy was to become.



Chernobyl Year


We dreamed of glowing children,
their throats alive and cancerous,
their eyes like lightning in the dark.

We were uneasy in our skins,
sixth grade, a year for blowing up,
for learning that nothing contains

that heat which comes from growing,
the way our parents seemed at once
both tall as cooling towers and crushed

beneath the pressure of small things—
family dinners, the evening news,
the dead voice of the dial tone.

Even the ground was ticking.
The parts that grew grew poison.
Whatever we ate became a stone.

Whatever we said was love became
plutonium, became a spark
of panic in the buried world.

   
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2010 by Jehanne Dubrow, whose most recent book of poems is Stateside, Northwestern Univ. Press, 2010. Poem reprinted from West Branch, No. 66, 2010, by permission of Jehanne Dubrow and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2011 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 318



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



I love poems that take pains to observe people at their tasks, and here’s a fine one by Christopher Todd Matthews, who lives in Virginia.



Window Washer


One hand slops suds on, one

hustles them down like a blind.

Brusque noon glare, filtered thus,

loosens and glows. For five or

six minutes he owns the place,

dismal coffee bar, and us, its

huddled underemployed. A blade,

black line against the topmost glass,



begins, slices off the outer lather,

flings it away, works inward,

corrals the frothy middle, and carves,

with quick cuts, the stuff down,

not looking for anything, beneath

or inside. Homes to the last,

cleans its edges, grooms it for

the end, then shaves it off



and flings it away. Which is

splendid, and merciless. And all

in the wrist. Then, he looks at us.

We makers of filth, we splashers

and spitters. We sitters and watchers.

Who like to see him work.

Who love it when he leaves

and gives it back: our grim hideout,

half spoiled by clarity.


   
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2010 by Christopher Todd Matthews, and reprinted from Field, No. 82, 2010, by permission of Christopher Todd Matthews and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2011 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 317


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


Our wars come home, sooner or later. Judith Harris lives in Washington, D.C., and in this poem gives us a veteran of Iraq back among the ordinary activities of American life.

End of Market Day


At five, the market is closing.
Burdock roots, parsley, and rutabagas
are poured back into the trucks.
The antique dealer breaks down his tables.


Light dappled, in winter parkas
shoppers hunt for bargains:
a teapot, or costume jewelry,
a grab bag of rubbishy vegetables for stew.


Now twilight, the farmer’s wife
bundled in her tweed coat and pocket apron
counts out her cash from a metal box,
and nods to her grown-up son


back from a tour in Iraq,
as he waits in the station wagon
with the country music turned way up,
his prosthetic leg gunning the engine.

  
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Judith Harris, whose most recent book of poetry is The Bad Secret, Louisiana State University Press, 2006. Poem reprinted from The Southern Review, Vol. 46, no. 1, 2009, by permission of Judith Harris and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2011 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 David Salner 

WORKING HERE

People who don’t work here
would never dream
what it takes to make iron.
That’s what we said at Eveleth Mines.

We walked a mile of coal-belts
to the tipping point, stared seven-stories down
into a shaft of air suffused with coal,
into the softness of slaked air.

On kiln patrol, marbles of iron
tumbled in a yellow ooze. The heat of hell
turned inches from our heads.
Then we paced a grate the size of a football field

to check each Atlas bearing
with something like a stethoscope
and listen for a telltale scratch
in the forever rolling of the world.

Or, we watched magnetic separators,
the red cones churning through a river
of gray ore. In the West Pit,
we climbed a ladder two stories high

to enter the cab of a loader. The bucket
brushed boulders of ore. It was a finger-flick.
But something about the crusher bothered us.
All over Northern Minnesota, it kept the earth awake,

shift after shift—until they shut it down,
and the whole expanse of grinding and breaking
ground to a halt. Then, everything was quiet
as an April snow. In all the bars,

the distant chatter of people, a sort of silence.
Rumors they’d be calling back
to Eveleth Mines. Rumors, then more silence.
Think back to the noisy world we kept alive

when we did things you’d never dream.
That’s what it took to make iron.


-from Working Here (Rooster Hill Press ) by David Salner. Originally appeared in Poet Lore.

By Jeanie Tomasko

The End of Dawn

A slant of pink is cradled just below
Your collarbone. It rises slightly when
You breathe, then falls. I kiss this light. I know
It is not mine to keep, but morning’s been

That way, so full of dreams. There was a time
I would have died for wings, but now to watch
You sleep is heaven. I do not want to fly.
The birds outside begin to talk of such

Ideas. Let them have their songs, their flight.
All night it stormed and I awoke to say
My prayers to gods of old—Desire and Light;
That they might change the world so I could stay.

The end of dawn and songs of birds and pain
Are more acute on mornings after rain.


-Originally appeared in The Midwest Quarterly