Light.

van Gogh, Still life with a Plate of Onions, 1889

AT the KITCHEN TABLE

Not a flock of stories,

not usually,

but a few that arrive at dusk,

in pairs, quietly

creating themselves

in the feathery light.

And rarely with fancy plumage

of blue or green or red

but plain, as of clay or wood,

with a plain little song.

Theirs are the open wings

we light our table by.

Ted Kooser

Before.

Rembrandt, Old Man in an Armchair, 1665

A book on the arm of my chair

and the morning before me.

Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser, from Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry

Holds.

I like to watch an old man cutting a sandwich in half,

maybe an ordinary cold roast beef on whole wheat bread,

no pickles or onion, keeping his shaky hands steady

by placing his forearms firm on the edge of the table

and using both hands, the left to hold the sandwich in place,

and the right to cut it surely, corner to corner,

observing his progress through glasses that moments before

he wiped with his napkin, and then to see him lift half

onto the extra plate that he asked the server to bring,

and then to wait, offering the plate to his wife

while she slowly unrolls her napkin and places her spoon,

her knife, and her fork in their proper places,

then smooths the starched white napkin over her knees

and meets his eyes and holds out both old hands to him.

Ted Kooser

Shimmering.

Light’s hand is swift, its penmanship

neat and precise. It jotted down a memo

on this square of paper, then left it behind,

a lost list of shadows burned by a paper clip

rusting away. Five men in half-light,

standing under the roof of an open porch,

holding a string of dead mallards.

One man grins and points at the camera,

his fingertip bright as a spark, reaching out,

touching the shimmering film of the future.

Ted Kooser

Dream.

SHIP-MODEL KIT

The lid of its box had a colorful picture

of a four-masted clipper unzipping

a blue ocean that had been loosely

laid out, its folds rolling, its opened

lapels showing a foamy white lining,

far more color right there on that flat

cardboard carton than on the millions

of pieces inside, all the same gray

like lead soldiers, and all fastened

together, tab to tab, plastic cast

as one piece, much like the long folds

of dolls that my Grandmother Kooser

snipped out of the Ames Daily Tribune

just to entertain me and my sister,

though all that had happened before

I’d grown older and ready to take on

an expensive, elaborate ship-model

kit with an accordion-fold of thin

paper instructions, hundreds of words

I had almost no patience for reading,

wanting to start where I wanted to

start, gluing together the few pieces

I recognized, laying the miniature

oars over the laps of the lifeboats,

etc., but this time I made myself

follow directions, having made wastes

of other such kits—fighter planes,

locomotives and cars—and I laid it

all out in my room on a card-table,

the halves of the hull, all the sails,

full, quarter and jib, like seashells,

all of the miscellaneous pieces

that a ship had to have to be real,

right down to the thin little ladders

of rigging to climb to the yardarms,

there to sit, keeping my balance

despite a stiff breeze, looking out

over the sea of my room, the night

with its crickets like ropes and spars

creaking below my screen window,

the waves I could feel going slack

at their edges, the faraway harbors

with their busy bazaars going quiet,

the salty nets drawn up and drying,

their glass floats like small bubbles

in the night’s iridescence, as I bent

squinting over the bits of that ship

I was building to dream me away.

Ted Kooser

Trust.

The child walks between her father and mother,

holding their hands. She makes the shape of the y

at the end of infancy, and lifts her feet

the way the y pulls up its feet, and swings

like the v in love, between an o and an e

who are strong and steady and as far as she knows

will be there to swing from forever. Sometimes

her father, using his free hand, points to something

and says its name, the way the arm of the r

points into the future at the end of father.

Or the r at the end of forever. It’s that forever

the child puts her trust in, lifting her knees,

singing her feet out over the world.

Ted Kooser

Will.

SELECTING a READER

First, I would have her be beautiful,

and walking carefully up on my poetry

at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,

her hair still damp at the neck

from washing it. She should be wearing

a raincoat, an old one, dirty

from not having money enough for the cleaners.

She will take out her glasses, and there

in the bookstore, she will thumb

over my poems, then put the book back

up on its shelf. She will say to herself,

“For that kind of money, I can get

my raincoat cleaned.” And she will.

Ted Kooser

Other.

Bottecelli, Birth of Venus (detail), 1486

AFTER YEARS

Today, from a distance, I saw you

walking away, and without a sound

the glittering face of a glacier

slid into the sea. An ancient oak

fell in the Cumberlands, holding only

a handful of leaves, and an old woman

scattering corn to her chickens looked up

for an instant. At the other side

of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times

the size of our own sun exploded

and vanished, leaving a small green spot

on the astronomer’s retina

as he stood in the great open dome

of my heart with no one to tell.

Ted Kooser

Hidden.

BARN OWL

High in the chaffy, taffy-colored haze
of the hayloft, up under the starry
nail-hole twinkle of the old tin roof,
there in a nest of straw and bailing twine
I have hidden my valentine for you:
a white heart woven of snowy feathers
in which wide eyes of welcome open
to you as you climb the rickety ladder
into my love. Behind those eyes lies
a boudoir of intimate darkness, darling,
the silks of oblivion. And set like a jewel
dead center in the heart is a golden hook
the size of a finger ring, to hold you
always, plumpest sweetheart mouse of mine.

Ted Kooser

Learning.

New Moon

How much it must bear on its back,

a great ball of blue shadow,

yet somehow it shines, keeps up

an appearance. For hours tonight,

I walk beneath it, learning.

I want to be better at carrying sorrow.

If my face is a mask, formed over

the shadows that fill me,

may I smile on the world like the moon.

Ted Kooser

Whisper.

Wyeth, Brush Pile, 1962

A farmhouse window far from back from the highway

speaks to the darkness in a small, sure voice.

Against the stillness, only a kettle’s whisper,

and against the stark cold, one small blue ring of flame.

Ted Kooser