Ted Kooser

January 25, 2023

“Trailways” by Ted KooserPosted by

Ted Kooser

TRAILWAYS

What once was the Trailways depot is a sports-bar today,
and no one remembers the last coach for Grand Island 
pulling out and away, or recalls its last passenger, ghostly 
in profile at one of the windows, turning to take one last look 
at the oil-stained cement platform and the green metal bench 
where he’d waited, shoes toed in under his duffle, then from
that high window looking down upon just one more place
where he’d been. Today’s door’s the same door as always, 
all glass, and just now it’s wedged open to a cool breeze, 
this in the slow hour just after lunch, with nothing or no one 
expected until later, the schedule of Arrivals and Departures 
gone from high on the wall, replaced by a flat-screen TV, 
the attendant’s desk gone, exchanged for a long, glass-ringed 
bar, and just now the smell of beer seeping out into the street 
from the shadows, where some other ghost on a barstool
is waiting for someone to roll in from somewhere, and talking  
to whoever will listen about going somewhere better some
day, but not yet, not till the time’s really right, and for now 
just having another of whatever’s on tap, turning the stool 
a half-turn to squint into the glare from all possible worlds.
 

—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022

__________

Ted Kooser: “Many years ago I published a poem about field mice moving their nests out of the way of a plow in early spring, and a woman who saw the poem wrote to me and said that she would never again pass a freshly-plowed field without thinking about those mice, and I said to myself, ‘Well, this is to be my job!’ and I have been working at it ever since.” (web)

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September 20, 2021

“Under a Forty-Watt Bulb” by Ted KooserPosted by

Ted Kooser

UNDER A FORTY-WATT BULB

These days he goes down the steep cellar stairs 
sideways, facing the wall, both hands clamped on 
the rail as he lowers a foot to the next step, 

not looking down but feeling the way with the toe 
of his slipper, placing the foot firmly, then waiting
a moment before lowering the other foot, fitting  

it next to the first, his thin leather slippers 
parked side by side as they’d be in a closet. Then
loosening one hand, sliding it down, getting

a good grip, the other hand following, gripping,
one foot swinging out, swinging down, its toe 
tapping the riser to feel it, then setting it down, 

the other foot following, step down to step without 
looking, his eyes to the wall as he counts his way 
lower, ten steps to the bottom, both feet on each step

down and down, as if to the bottom of time 
where everything’s settled, then back, step by step, 
but now climbing forward, a little more labored, 

pushing a quart jar of peaches from each step
to the step just above, one step at a time, a man
following peaches, only one hand on the rail.

—from Rattle #72, Summer 2021

__________

Ted Kooser: “I’ll be 82 when these poems are published and both describe me. I had a second bout with cancer a year and a half ago, and ‘Cancer’ comes out of that experience. I’m not dying, or even close to dying, but death comes by and rattles the doorknob more and more often. We have a fine house, a re-build, with very steep cellar stairs due to some architectural reconfiguration. That guy in ‘Under a Forty-Watt Bulb’ is yours truly, lucky to be able to get up and down a flight of stairs without having to stop and breathe. Health good, balance a little iffy.” (web)

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September 17, 2021

“Cancer” by Ted KooserPosted by

Ted Kooser

CANCER

I heard a little rattle, saw the doorknob jiggle,
then go still. How often I had seen this in a film, 
but now I was the woman in the darkened 
parlor drawing back the curtain just an inch  
to see nobody there, the street, all up and down,
a glaring void, no one to call out to, to cry to, 
the menace now an utter emptiness, so bright 
it seemed the sky was white as porcelain. 

A bleached leaf that had fallen on the sidewalk 
wasn’t moving though the light was blowing
hard, a steady gale, it having scoured out 
everything beyond me. Death was gone, at least
for now, it having tried my door to find 
the deadbolt held, the one that I’d been born with. 

—from Rattle #72, Summer 2021

__________

Ted Kooser: “I’ll be 82 when these poems are published and both describe me. I had a second bout with cancer a year and a half ago, and ‘Cancer’ comes out of that experience. I’m not dying, or even close to dying, but death comes by and rattles the doorknob more and more often. We have a fine house, a re-build, with very steep cellar stairs due to some architectural reconfiguration. That guy in ‘Under a Forty-Watt Bulb’ is yours truly, lucky to be able to get up and down a flight of stairs without having to stop and breathe. Health good, balance a little iffy.” (web)

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April 7, 2020

“A Pretty Pass” by Ted KooserPosted by

Ted Kooser

A PRETTY PASS

Things have come to a pretty pass, Mother,
as you’d be saying today, when the mailman’s
afraid of the mail, up at our box by the road,
extending a latex-gloved hand from his Jeep
to put in my earlier letter to you, stamped:
RETURN TO SENDER. ADDRESS UNKNOWN,
but I’m trying again. I’ve been wanting to
tell you that the address you left behind,
that of your house on slow 29th Street,
its shutters nailed open, never meant to
shut out anything—that open-windowed
world is gone, and the world that replaced it
isn’t one that you’d recognize, the mailman
wearing disposable gloves, and neighbors
quarantined in their houses as they wait
for a little good news. And, although you
resisted it fiercely—perched in your chair
by your front window’s familiar view,
your sewing basket always within reach,
for making new things, and for making things
new or nearly new, mending and darning
at a time when the world was still mendable—
I’d say you were lucky to go when you did.

—from Poets Respond
April 7, 2020

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Ted Kooser: “This poem is obviously written in response to COVID-19. It’s my third about this.”

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December 27, 2019

“Wood Chips” by Ted KooserPosted by

Ted Kooser

WOOD CHIPS

I kicked them up pruning a rose bush
at the end of October, just chanced
upon them because they were there, by then,

after thirty years there, grown over
by those grasses you find among roses.
You know how when high water recedes

in a pond that’s been flooded by rains
it sometimes leaves an intricate bed
of bark and twigs woven into the reeds?

Those wood chips were matted like that,
and were driftwood gray, gray driftwood,
although I remembered them fresh

from the chipper, the color and fragrance
of slices of peach, or of rose petals
fallen away. I often find myself now

picking up things and looking at them
both as they are and as they were,
as I am, also, both, both pink and gray.

—from Rattle #65, Fall 2019

__________

Ted Kooser: “Many years ago I published a poem about field mice moving their nests out of the way of a plow in early spring, and a woman who saw the poem wrote to me and said that she would never again pass a freshly-plowed field without thinking about those mice, and I said to myself, ‘Well this is to be my job!’ and I have been working at it ever since.” (web)

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December 25, 2019

“A Town Somewhere” by Ted KooserPosted by

Ted Kooser

A TOWN SOMEWHERE

I’d like to find it for you but I can’t. You might not
like it anyway. It’s quaint and pretty in an old,
worn way, quite near to me at times. But then it’s
gone, impossible to find. I’ve been there always
but I haven’t been, if you can understand. It’s a town
that I remember in sweet detail that was never.

It would be simple to find someone to love,
it’s so open there. Whenever there’s a fence around
a stand of flowers—bachelor’s buttons—there’s a gate
with a hook-and-eye latch that a finger can lift,
and whenever you see shutters framing windows,
they’re decorations only, for they shut out nothing.

Those windows are Windex clean, too, sprayed
and wiped with wads of inessential news.
If you peer deep into the liquid shadows, careful
to avoid stirring the surface, you might see a figure
rising, as if to take a breath of what’s beyond,
looking out at you above a sill of potted violets.

Was she the person you might love? She’s gone.
And even as I call up the town for you I feel it
darken. Sundown. A dog is in the distance barking
and barking, as if aware that we’d been there
just passing through, leaving no more than a scent
on the wind, where no one was, or seemed to be.

—from Rattle #65, Fall 2019
2021 Pushcart Prize Winner

__________

Ted Kooser: “Many years ago I published a poem about field mice moving their nests out of the way of a plow in early spring, and a woman who saw the poem wrote to me and said that she would never again pass a freshly-plowed field without thinking about those mice, and I said to myself, ‘Well this is to be my job!’ and I have been working at it ever since.” (web)

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June 12, 2017

“The Sick Bat” by Ted KooserPosted by

Ted Kooser

THE SICK BAT

It was right side up, which was wrong
for a bat, and was hiding its face
in its shadow, its back to the sun.
It clung to a fieldstone sill at the base
of our barn’s south wall, ten feet below
a house for bats I’d built and nailed up
years before. I suppose it was trying
to pull itself up to the others—the sill
was black with their droppings—
but it didn’t move. For four summer days
I watched it, thinking it had to be dead
but not wanting to touch it, and then,
one afternoon, I brushed it with a stalk
of tall grass and it cried out, not turning
to face what had touched it, moving
no more than the tip of one wing.
In that instant I’d entered a world
I knew nothing of—at least nothing yet—
and I drew back at once. From then on
I kept at a distance. Whenever I looked
it was there, both dead and alive,
and I looked there until it was gone.

—from Rattle #55, Spring 2017

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Ted Kooser: “My sick bat poem has a back story. About ten years ago I was bitten by a bat that I mistakenly tried to brush away from a bonfire. It got me through my glove. I had manipulated it into a coffee can and was instructed to take it to our county sheriff’s office to be forwarded on to a lab for analysis. My wife made the delivery for me and, typical Nebraskan that he was, the sheriff’s deputy asked her if she wanted the coffee can back. The bat turned out to be rabid, and I had to have the shots, but the coffee can story was worth all the trouble.” (website)

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