Poem of the Week, by Ted Kooser

Posted on by alisonmcghee

 

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My grandfather had a wild child of a sister who, if I’m remembering right, ran off in her teens to marry a carnie. She loved to fall in love, but it didn’t always end well. I only met her once, at lunch, when my family was on a road trip and we stopped at her and her current husband’s home. When he was spoken about among family members, it was always in dark, hushed tones. He was mean, apparently, angry and abusive, with a violent temper, and my great-aunt was afraid of him. At that lunch what I, the child, saw was an old man who sat silently at the head of the table. I watched as he tried to spread mustard on a piece of bread. The knife dropped from his hand and mustard splattered on his plate. I remember the covert look he darted around the table when this happened. No one said anything or looked at him, but I remember briefly meeting his eyes and sensing his humiliation. The image of that old man and the look in his eyes has been with me my whole life, and it came flooding back when I read this poem.

Tattoo
– Ted Kooser

What once was meant to be a statement—
a dripping dagger held in the fist
of a shuddering heart—is now just a bruise
on a bony old shoulder, the spot
where vanity once punched him hard
and the ache lingered on. He looks like
someone you had to reckon with,
strong as a stallion, fast and ornery,
but on this chilly morning, as he walks
between the tables at a yard sale
with the sleeves of his tight black T-shirt
rolled up to show us who he was,
he is only another old man, picking up
broken tools and putting them back,
his heart gone soft and blue with stories.

 

For more information on Ted Kooser, please click here.

 

 

Poem of the Week, by Ted Kooser

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Mother

– Ted Kooser

Mid April already, and the wild plums
bloom at the roadside, a lacy white
against the exuberant, jubilant green
of new grass an the dusty, fading black
of burned-out ditches. No leaves, not yet,
only the delicate, star-petaled
blossoms, sweet with their timeless perfume.

You have been gone a month today
and have missed three rains and one nightlong
watch for tornadoes. I sat in the cellar
from six to eight while fat spring clouds
went somersaulting, rumbling east. Then it poured,
a storm that walked on legs of lightning,
dragging its shaggy belly over the fields.

The meadowlarks are back, and the finches
are turning from green to gold. Those same
two geese have come to the pond again this year,
honking in over the trees and splashing down.
They never nest, but stay a week or two
then leave. The peonies are up, the red sprouts
burning in circles like birthday candles,

for this is the month of my birth, as you know,
the best month to be born in, thanks to you,
everything ready to burst with living.
There will be no more new flannel nightshirts
sewn on your old black Singer, no birthday card
addressed in a shaky but businesslike hand.
You asked me if I would be sad when it happened

and I am sad. But the iris I moved from your house
now hold in the dusty dry fists of their roots
green knives and forks as if waiting for dinner,
as if spring were a feast. I thank you for that.
Were it not for the way you taught me to look
at the world, to see the life at play in everything,
I would have to be lonely forever.


—

​For more information on Ted Kooser, please click here: http://tedkooser.net/​


—
My blog: alisonmcghee.com/blog

My Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Alison-McGhee/119862491361265?ref=ts

Poem of the Week, by Ted Kooser

Posted on by alisonmcghee

A Washing of Hands
– Ted Kooser

She turned on the tap and a silver braid
unraveled over her fingers.
She cupped them, weighing that tassel,
first in one hand and then the other,
then pinched through the threads
as if searching for something, perhaps
an entangled cocklebur of water,
or the seed of a lake. A time or two
she took the tassel in both hands,
squeezed it into a knot, wrung out
the cold and the light, and then, at the end,
pulled down hard on it twice,
as if the water were a rope and she was
ringing a bell to call me, two bright rings,
though I was there.



—

For more information on Ted Kooser, please click here: http://tedkooser.net/


—
My blog: alisonmcghee.com/blog

My Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Alison-McGhee/119862491361265?ref=ts