Kooser & Kenyon

What would I do without my poetry-loving friends!?

Thanks to recent comments from Marion and Quid, I purchased two more poetry books that are both great! Good Poems for Hard Times is another anthology from Garrison Keillor and every bit as good as the first one I got. It includes this poem by Ted Kooser, a poet I was blessed to meet in person a couple of years ago.

A Spiral Notebook

The bright wire rolls like a porpoise

in and out of the calm blue sea

of the cover, or perhaps like a sleeper

twisting in and out of his dreams,

for it could hold a record of dreams

if you wanted to buy it for that

though it seems to be meant for

more serious work, with its

college-ruled lines and its cover

that states in emphatic white letters,

5 SUBJECT NOTEBOOK. It seems

a part of growing old is no longer to

have five subjects, each

demanding an equal share of attention,

set apart by brown cardboard dividers,

but instead to stand in a drugstore

and hang on to one subject

a little too long, like this notebook

you weigh in your hands, passing

your fingers over its surfaces

as if it were some kind of wonder.

Ted Kooser

I really liked the Jane Kenyon poems I read and decided to treat myself to her book Collected Poems. Most of the poetry books I have by individual authors are slim volumes, but this is a thick book, filled with wonderful poems like the one I’ve shared here.

The Pear

There is a moment in middle age

when you grow bored, angered

by your middling mind,

afraid.

That day the sun

burns hot and bright,

making you more desolate.

It happens subtly, as when a pear

spoils from the inside out,

and you may not be aware

until things have gone too far.

Jane Kenyon

On another note…. I decided to go ahead and start eating meat again. It was time for a change.