Ted Kooser is one of the most celebrated and lauded American poets living today. He won the Pulitzer in 2004 for his collection Delights & Shadows, and, according to his website, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant to the Library of Congress from 2004 to 2006. The two poems below are from his 1985 collection One World at a Time.- - - - - - -
Just Now
By Ted Kooser
Just now, if I look back down
the cool street of the past, I can see
streetlamps, one for each year,
lighting small circles of time
into which someone will step
if I squint, if I try hard enough --
circles smaller and smaller,
leading back to the one faint point
at the start, like a star.
So many of them are empty now,
those circles of roadside and grass.
In one, the moth of some feeling
still flutters, unspoken,
the cold darkness around it enormous.
- - - - - - -
An Empty Shotgun Shell
By Ted Kooser
It's a handsome thing
in its uniform --
all crimson and brass --
standing guard
at the gate to the field,
but something
is wrong at its heart.
It's dark in there,
so dark a whole night
could squeeze in,
could shrink back up in there
like a spider,
a black one
with smoke in its hair.
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