Ted Kooser

A Happy Birthday

This evening, I sat by an open window

and read till the light was gone and the book

was no more than a part of the darkness.

I could easily have switched on a lamp,

but I wanted to ride this day down into night,

to sit alone and smooth the unreadable page

with the pale gray ghost of my hand.

Dishwater

Slap of the screen door, flat knock

of my grandmother’s boxy black shoes

on the wooden stoop, the hush and sweep

of her knob-kneed, cotton-aproned stride

out to the edge and then, toed in

with a furious twist and heave,

a bridge that leaps from her hot red hands

and hangs there shining for fifty years

over the mystified chickens,

over the swaying nettles, the ragweed,

the clay slope down to the creek,

over the redwing blackbirds in the tops

of the willows, a glorious rainbow

with an empty dishpan swinging at one end.

Untitled

Each time I go outside

the world is different.

This has happened all my life.

*

The clock stopped at 5:30

for three months.

Now it’s always time to quit work,

have a drink, cook dinner.

*

“What I would do for wisdom,”

I cried out as a young man.

Evidently not much. Or so it seems.

Even on walks I follow the dog.

*

Old friend,

perhaps we work too hard

at being remembered.

PORCH SWING IN SEPTEMBER

The porch swing hangs fixed in a morning sun

that bleaches its gray slats, its flowered cushion

whose flowers have faded, like those of summer,

and a small brown spider has hung out her webs

on a line between porch post and chain

so that no one may swing without breaking it.

She is saying it’s time that the swinging were done with,

time that the creaking and pinging and popping

that sang through the ceiling were past,

time now for the soft vibrations of moths,

the wasp tapping each board for an entrance,

the cool dewdrops to brush from her work

every morning, one world at a time.

A ROOM IN THE PAST

It’s a kitchen. Its curtains fill

with a morning light so bright

you can’t see beyond its windows

into the afternoon. A kitchen

falling through time with its things

in their places, the dishes jingling

up in the cupboard, the bucket

of drinking water rippled as if

a truck had just gone past, but that truck

was thirty years. No one’s at home

in this room. Its counter is wiped,

and the dishrag hangs from its nail,

a dry leaf. In housedresses of mist,

blue aprons of rain, my grandmother

moved through this life like a ghost,

and when she had finished her years,

she put them all back in their places

and wiped out the sink, turning her back

on the rest of us, forever.

DEPRESSION GLASS

It seemed those rose-pink dishes

she kept for special company

were always cold, brought down

from the shelf in jingling stacks,

the plates like the panes of ice

she broke from the water bucket

winter mornings, the flaring cups

like tulips that opened too early

and got bitten by frost. They chilled

the coffee no matter how quickly

you drank, while a heavy

everyday mug would have kept

a splash hot for the better

part of a conversation. It was hard

to hold up your end of the gossip

with your coffee cold, but it was

a special occasion, just the same,

to sit at her kitchen table

and sip the bitter percolation

of the past week’s rumors from cups

it had taken a year to collect

at the grocery, with one piece free

for each five pounds of flour

IN THE BASEMENT OF THE GOODWILL STORE

In musty light, in the thin brown air

of damp carpet, doll heads and rust,

beneath long rows of sharp footfalls

like nails in a lid, an old man stands

trying on glasses, lifting each pair

from the box like a glittering fish

and holding it up to the light

of a dirty bulb. Near him, a heap

of enameled pans as white as skulls

looms in the catacomb shadows,

and old toilets with dry red throats

cough up bouquets of curtain rods.

You’ve seen him somewhere before.

He’s wearing the green leisure suit

you threw out with the garbage,

and the Christmas tie you hated,

and the ventilated wingtip shoes

you found in your father’s closet

and wore as a joke. And the glasses

which finally fit him, through which

he looks to see you looking back—

two mirrors which flash and glance—

are those through which one day

you too will look down over the years,

when you have grown old and thin

and no longer particular,

and the things you once thought

you were rid of forever

have taken you back in their arms.

LATE FEBRUARY

The first warm day,

and by mid-afternoon

the snow is no more

than a washing

strewn over the yards,

the bedding rolled in knots

and leaking water,

the white shirts lying

under the evergreens.

Through the heaviest drifts

rise autumn’s fallen

bicycles, small carnivals

of paint and chrome,

the Octopus

and Tilt-A-Whirl

beginning to turn

in the sun. Now children,

stiffened by winter

and dressed, somehow,

like old men, mutter

and bend to the work

of building dams.

But such a spring is brief;

by five o’clock

the chill of sundown,

darkness, the blue TVs

flashing like storms

in the picture windows,

the yards gone gray,

the wet dogs barking

at nothing. Far off

across the cornfields

staked for streets and sewers,

the body of a farmer

missing since fall

will show up

in his garden tomorrow,

as unexpected

as a tulip.

SO THIS IS NEBRASKA

The gravel road rides with a slow gallop

over the fields, the telephone lines

streaming behind, its billow of dust

full of the sparks of redwing blackbirds.

On either side, those dear old ladies,

the loosening barns, their little windows

dulled by cataracts of hay and cobwebs

hide broken tractors under their skirts.

So this is Nebraska. A Sunday

afternoon; July. Driving along

with your hand out squeezing the air,

a meadowlark waiting on every post.

Behind a shelterbelt of cedars,

top-deep in hollyhocks, pollen and bees,

a pickup kicks its fenders off

and settles back to read the clouds.

You feel like that; you feel like letting

your tires go flat, like letting the mice

build a nest in your muffler, like being

no more than a truck in the weeds,

clucking with chickens or sticky with honey

or holding a skinny old man in your lap

while he watches the road, waiting

for someone to wave to. You feel like

waving. You feel like stopping the car

and dancing around on the road. You wave

instead and leave your hand out gliding

larklike over the wheat, over the houses.

THE CHINA PAINTERS

They have set aside their black tin boxes,

scratched and dented,

spattered with drops of pink and blue;

and their dried-up, rolled-up tubes

of alizarin crimson, chrome green,

zinc white, and ultramarine;

their vials half full of gold powder;

stubs of wax pencils;

frayed brushes with tooth-bitten shafts;

and have gone in fashion and with grace

into the clouds of loose, lush roses,

narcissus, pansies, columbine,

on teapots, chocolate pots,

saucers and cups, the good Haviland dishes

spread like a garden

on the white lace Sunday cloth,

as if their souls were bees

and the world had been nothing but flowers.

AN EPIPHANY

I have seen the Brown Recluse Spider

run with a net in her hand, or rather,

what resembled a net, what resembled

a hand. She ran down the gleaming white floor

of the bathtub, trailing a frail swirl

of hair, and in it the hull of a beetle

lay woven. The hair was my wife’s,

long and dark, a few loose strands, a curl

she might idly have turned on a finger,

she might idly have twisted, speaking to me,

and the legs of the beetle were broken.

A LETTER IN OCTOBER

Dawn comes later and later now,

and I, who only a month ago

could sit with coffee every morning

watching the light walk down the hill

to the edge of the pond and place

a doe there, shyly drinking,

then see the light step out upon

the water, sowing reflections

to either side—a garden

of trees that grew as if by magic—

now see no more than my face,

mirrored by darkness, pale and odd,

startled by time. While I slept,

night in its thick winter jacket

bridled the doe with a twist

of wet leaves and led her away,

then brought its black horse with harness

that creaked like a cricket, and turned

the water garden under. I woke,

and at the waiting window found

the curtains open to my open face;

beyond me, darkness. And I,

who only wished to keep looking out,

must now keep looking in.

A BLIND WOMAN

She had turned her face up into

a rain of light, and came on smiling.

The light trickled down her forehead

and into her eyes. It ran down

into the neck of her sweatshirt

and wet the white tops of her breasts.

Her brown shoes splashed on

into the light. The moment was like

a circus wagon rolling before her

through puddles of light, a cage on wheels,

and she walked fast behind it,

exuberant, curious, pushing her cane

through the bars, poking and prodding,

while the world cowered back in a corner.

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