Kindest Regards. Ted Kooser
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and what these things
have come to mean to me
without you. I raked the yard
this morning, and it rained
this afternoon. Tonight,
along the shiny street,
the bags of leaves —
wet-shouldered
but warm in their skins —
are huddled together, close,
so close to life.
The Voyager 2 Satellite
The tin man is cold;
the glitter of distant worlds
is like snow on his coat.
Free-falling through space,
he spreads his arms
and slowly turns,
hands reaching to catch
the white, elusive
dandelion fuzz
of starlight. He is the dove
with wings of purest gold
sent out upon the deep
to seek a place for us,
the goat upon whose back
we’ve sent our problems
into exile, the dreamy beast
of peace and silence
who now grows smaller, smaller,
falling so gracefully
into the great blank face
of God.
As the President Spoke
As the President spoke, he raised a finger
to emphasize something he said. I’ve forgotten
just what he was saying, but as he spoke
he glanced at that finger as if it were
somebody else’s, and his face went slack and gray,
and he folded his finger back into his hand
and put it down under the podium
along with whatever it meant, with whatever he’d seen
as it spun out and away from that bony axis.
The Urine Specimen
In the clinic, a sun-bleached shell of stone
on the shore of the city, you enter
the last small chamber, a little closet
chastened with pearl — cool, white, and glistening —
and over the chilly well of the toilet
you trickle your precious sum in a cup.
It’s as simple as that. But the heat
of this gold your body’s melted and poured out
into a form begins to enthrall you,
warming your hand with your flesh’s fevers
in a terrible way. It’s like holding
an organ — spleen or fatty pancreas,
a lobe from your foamy brain still steaming
with worry. You know that just outside
a nurse is waiting to cool it into a gel
and slice it onto a microscope slide
for the doctor, who in it will read your future,
wringing his hands. You lift the chalice and toast
the long life of your friend there in the mirror,
who wanly smiles, but does not drink to you.
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 web
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,