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Aging arms splotched with purple and red signs of tangling with jagged dead branches among white pines along the back of the yard reach for a copy of Ted Kooser's _Flying at Night_. Pages flip for a stop here and there to read _Sunset_, _Carp_ and _Spring Plowing_ Envy swells inside him with the realization that he will never write such fine poems which prompt memories of childhood adventures living rural among tiger lilies blooming in meadows, newborn calves teetering toward first steps, and freshly spread manure capturing the scent of fall air. His fingers still grimy from early morning planting place Kooser's volume carefully beside his empty coffee cup content that he is blessed to have discovered it that day hiding next to classic tomes by Shakespeare and Whitman. He rises to tackle digging potholes for double begonias to decorate his yard and and to dream of pages unread.
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Apr 22, 2014
Apr 22, 2014 at 11:36 AM UTC
william-a-poppen
Pages Unread
Aging arms splotched with purple and red signs of tangling with jagged dead branches among white pines along the back of the yard reach for a copy of Ted Kooser's _Flying at Night_. Pages flip for a stop here and there to read _Sunset_, _Carp_ and _Spring Plowing_ Envy swells inside him with the realization that he will never write such fine poems which prompt memories of childhood adventures living rural among tiger lilies blooming in meadows, newborn calves teetering toward first steps, and freshly spread manure capturing the scent of fall air. His fingers still grimy from early morning planting place Kooser's volume carefully beside his empty coffee cup content that he is blessed to have discovered it that day hiding next to classic tomes by Shakespeare and Whitman. He rises to tackle digging potholes for double begonias to decorate his yard and and to dream of pages unread.
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He sat there behind the table, with his glasses sitting on his nose, and his skin sitting on his bones - both loosely, the way you’d expect someone to sit after 75 years of good, but hard, living. “The trick is-” he said deliberately pausing to shift the weight of the sentence toward the upcoming words “you have to wipe away all the things you don't want to see." He said this as he scribbled his name inside my new copy of his old book smiling in that gentle old man way. I scampered away like a schoolboy feeling like an idiot having rambled at him in my best impression of a scholar - like a kid wearing his dad’s oversized suit. I talked at him about how well he captures a moment in poetry like this former US Poet Laureate wasn’t aware of his talent and I was somehow the first delivering the good news. As I wander the campus, having escaped my embarrassment I think back to a poem he read tonight about watching an old couple sharing a sandwich. It was an ode to love, an image you can see in any sit down restaurant, literally anywhere in America. He focused in on this couple, in this diner at this moment apart from time, like a moving still life forever framed by his words. He wiped away the screaming kid and its overwhelmed mother in the booth to the left, the table of teenagers playing hooky to their right, and the underpaid twnetysomething waitress who clearly didn’t want to be there anyway. He wiped away all of that distraction and unearthed this beautiful moment this pure example of true love- A sandwich cut from corner to corner by the shaking hands of a man whose glasses sit upon his face and skin upon his bones all the way you expect a man to with woman he’s loved for forty years with whom he shares everything. I think about the moments I have missed the poems never writ because I was staring at the waitress, who clearly didn’t want to be there anyway.
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Apr 12, 2014
Apr 12, 2014 at 12:46 PM UTC
jm-romig-1
On Meeting Ted Kooser
He sat there behind the table, with his glasses sitting on his nose, and his skin sitting on his bones - both loosely, the way you’d expect someone to sit after 75 years of good, but hard, living. “The trick is-” he said deliberately pausing to shift the weight of the sentence toward the upcoming words “you have to wipe away all the things you don't want to see." He said this as he scribbled his name inside my new copy of his old book smiling in that gentle old man way. I scampered away like a schoolboy feeling like an idiot having rambled at him in my best impression of a scholar - like a kid wearing his dad’s oversized suit. I talked at him about how well he captures a moment in poetry like this former US Poet Laureate wasn’t aware of his talent and I was somehow the first delivering the good news. As I wander the campus, having escaped my embarrassment I think back to a poem he read tonight about watching an old couple sharing a sandwich. It was an ode to love, an image you can see in any sit down restaurant, literally anywhere in America. He focused in on this couple, in this diner at this moment apart from time, like a moving still life forever framed by his words. He wiped away the screaming kid and its overwhelmed mother in the booth to the left, the table of teenagers playing hooky to their right, and the underpaid twnetysomething waitress who clearly didn’t want to be there anyway. He wiped away all of that distraction and unearthed this beautiful moment this pure example of true love- A sandwich cut from corner to corner by the shaking hands of a man whose glasses sit upon his face and skin upon his bones all the way you expect a man to with woman he’s loved for forty years with whom he shares everything. I think about the moments I have missed the poems never writ because I was staring at the waitress, who clearly didn’t want to be there anyway.
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