Tag: Ted Kooser

with no one to tell

Live & Learn25 Comments

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 on the great open dome
of my heart with no one to tell.

— Ted Kooser, “After Years,” Solo: A Journal of Poetry, Spring 1996

Photo: Supernova remnant is the spectacular remains of an exploded star, located about 190,000 light-years away. The expanding multimillion degree remnant is about 30 light-years across and contains more than a billion times the oxygen contained in the Earth’s ocean and atmosphere…We see the remnant as it was about 190,000 years ago, around a thousand years after the explosion occurred. The star exploded outward at speeds in excess of 20 million kilometers per hour. (Image Credit – NASA via Anne’s Astronomy News)

Dawn in the north. His nose stalks the air.

Live & Learn5 Comments

coffee

I want to describe my life
in hushed tones
like a TV nature program.
Dawn in the north.
His nose stalks the air
for newborn coffee.

~ Jim Harrison & Ted Kooser, Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry

 

Notes: Photo via Your Eyes Blaze Out

Only a kettle’s whisper

Live & Learn11 Comments

blue-flame-kettle

A farmhouse window far back from the highway
speaks to the darkness in a small, sure voice.
Against this stillness, only a kettle’s whisper,
and against the starry cold, one small blue ring of flame.

~ Ted Kooser, “A Winter Morning” From Delights & Shadows

Notes:

 

Saturday Morning

Live & Learn11 Comments

fence, fence posts, posts,

Even through curtains,
the sun will assert itself enough to soften a candle,
its warmth insistent as a kiss till the candle bends back.
We all fall under the spell of the sun
and are all at the end bent and consumed.
See how a long row of fence posts
leans over a deeply cut road
as if they’d been pushed by the light.

~ Ted Kooser, November. The Wheeling Year: A Poet’s Field Book

Photo: Beechwood by Heiko Fritz

Lightly child, lightly

Live & Learn7 Comments

fingers-hand

Four in the morning, cold and still but for the buzz of my yard light as it talks to the one up the hill at my neighbor’s. Mine says it feels the earth spinning it out to the end of its post, like a drop of light that might at any instant shake off into the stars, but my neighbor’s says that’s nonsense, the typical thing you can expect to hear from a poet’s lamp: Nothing on earth can feel that centrifugal force. As for me, I know how light on their legs the fat mice are as they carry the dog food, nugget by nugget, feeling the warmth spin away from the earth, and how the trees are flushed at this time of the year with the effort of holding leaves. Oh, yes, there is a steady tug from the Milky Way, and I can feel my fingers lifting just a little away from these keys, not touching and then touching again, one tap and then another.

So light I am, so light is my heart when I am up early, trying to write.

~ Ted Kooser, September. The Wheeling Year: A Poet’s Field Book

Notes:

  • Photo: NoelleBuske – “Magia” (via Mennyfox55)
  • Prior “Lightly child, lightly” Posts? Connect here.
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”