by Ted Kooser
In a Country Cemetery in Iowa
—for James Hearst
Someone's been up here nights,
and in a hurry,
breaking the headstones.
And someone else,
with a little time to spare,
has mended them;
some farmer, I'd say,
who knows his welding.
He's stacked them up in
harnesses of iron,
old angle iron and strap,
taking a little extra time
to file the welds down smooth.
Just passing through, you'd say
it looks like foolishness.
The Man with the Hearing Aid
A man takes out his hearing aid
and falls asleep, his good ear deep
in the pillow. Thousands of bats
fly out of the other ear.
All night they flutter and dive
through laughter, catching the punch lines,
their ears all blood and velvet.
At dawn they return. The weary squeaks
make the old stone cavern ring
with gibberish. As the man awakens,
the last of the bats folds into sleep.
His ear is thick with fur and silence.
The Very Old
The very old are forever
hurting themselves,
burning their fingers
on skillets, falling
loosely as trees
and breaking their hips
with muffled explosions of bone.
Down the block
they are wheeled in
out of our sight
for years at a time.
To make conversation,
the neighbors ask
if they are still alive.
Then, early one morning,
through our kitchen windows
we see them again,
first one and then another,
out in their gardens
on crutches and canes,
perennial,
checking their gauges for rain.
Walking Beside a Creek
Walking beside a creek
in December, the black ice
windy with leaves,
you can feel the great joy
of the trees, their coats
thrown open like drunken men,
the lifeblood thudding
in their tight, wet boots.
Book Club
Mother has come to the clean end
of a morning full of the clink of mints
in little dishes, of lemon oil
tart in the living-room air,
of the water ballet of the folding chairs
rehearsing their kicks in a circle
of patience. The ladies are due
at two o'clock, a fat tour guide
of Hawaii on schedule, lagoons
of romance to lap the hot shore
in each girdle, volcanoes of ashes
filling the ashtrays, the bright birds
of sweet smiles crisscrossing
the circle.
Meanwhile, my father
is picking up leaves from the drive;
as he bends, his blood tries the loose doors
of his arteries. At sixty-six,
with his retirement Bulova
wound tight as his heart, he has entered
the blue, high-altitude hallway of age.
There air is thin. If he looks forward
or back he gets dizzy. Today, in the bleak
exile of book club, even his bathroom's
forbidden to him. His razor and soap
have been hidden, his pills put away.
If he needs to go to the bathroom,
he'll have to walk down to the station
and ask for the key. Most likely though,
he's safe.
At the foot of the stairs
to the basement, he's drawn up an armchair
and floor lamp. Through the long afternoon,
he'll sit there pretending to read,
while above him the pink mints go around
in slow circles, and lovely Hawaii
comes to Des Moines in the hula
of numb fannies on laboring chairs.
At the End of the Weekend
It is Sunday afternoon,
and I suddenly miss
my distant son, who at ten
has just this instant buzzed
my house in a flying
cardboard box, dipping
one wing to look down over
my shimmering roof, the yard,
the car in the drive. In his room
three hundred miles from me,
he tightens his helmet,
grips the controls, turns
loops and rolls. My windows
rattle. On days like this,
the least quick shadow crossing
the page makes me look up
at the sky like a goose,
squinting to see that flash
that I dream is his thought of me
daring to fall through the distance,
then climbing, full throttle, away.
Uncle Adler
He had come to the age
when his health had put cardboard
in all of its windows.
The oil in his eyes was so old
it would barely light,
and his chest was a chimney
full of bees. Of it all,
he had nothing to say;
his Adam's apple hung like a ham
in a stairwell. Lawyers
encircled the farm like a fence,
and his daughters fought over
the china. Then one day
while everyone he'd ever loved
was digging in his yard,
he suddenly sucked in his breath so hard
the whole estate fell in on him.
In the Corners of Fields
Something is calling to me
from the corners of fields,
where the leftover fence wire
suns its loose coils, and stones
thrown out of the furrow
sleep in warm litters;
where the gray faces
of old No Hunting signs
mutter into the wind,
and dry horse tanks
spout fountains of sunflowers;
where a moth
flutters in from the pasture,
harried by sparrows,
and alights on a post,
so sure of its life
that it peacefully opens its wings.
How to Make Rhubarb Wine
Go to the patch some afternoon
in early summer, fuzzy with beer
and sunlight, and pick a sack
of rhubarb (red or green will do)
and God knows watch for rattlesnakes
or better, listen; they make a sound
like an old lawn mower rolled downhill.
Wear a hat. A straw hat's best
for the heat but lets the gnats in.
Bunch up the stalks and chop the leaves off
with a buck knife and be careful.
You need ten pounds; a grocery bag
packed full will do it. Then go home
and sit barefooted in the shade
behind the house with a can of beer.
Spread out the rhubarb in the grass
and wash it with cold water
from the garden hose, washing
your feet as well. Then take a nap.
That evening, dice the rhubarb up
and put it in a crock. Then pour
eight quarts of boiling water in,
cover it up with a checkered cloth
to keep the fruit flies out of it,
and let it stand five days or so.
Take time each day to think of it.
Ferment ten days, under the cloth,
&n
bsp; sniffing of it from time to time,
then siphon it off, swallowing some,
and bottle it. Sit back and watch
the liquid clear to honey yellow,
bottled and ready for the years,
and smile. You've done it awfully well.
Late Lights in Minnesota
At the end of a freight train rolling away,
a hand swinging a lantern.
The only lights left behind in the town
are a bulb burning cold in the jail,
and high in one house,
a five-battery flashlight
pulling an old woman downstairs to the toilet
among the red eyes of her cats.
The Afterlife
It will be February there,
a foreign-language newspaper
rolling along the dock
in an icy wind, a few
old winos wiping their eyes
over a barrel of fire;
down the streets, mad women
shaking rats from their mops
on each stoop, and odd,
twisted children,
playing with matches and knives.
Then, behind us, trombones:
the horns of the tugs
turning our great gray ship
back into the mist.
A Widow
She's combed his neckties out of her hair
and torn out the tongues of his shoes.
She's poured his ashes out of their urn
and into his humidor. For the very last time,
she's scrubbed the floor around the toilet.
She hates him even more for dying.
So This Is Nebraska
The gravel road rides with a slow gallop
over the fields, the telephone lines
streaming behind, its billow of dust
full of the sparks of redwing blackbirds.
On either side, those dear old ladies,
the loosening barns, their little windows
dulled by cataracts of hay and cobwebs
hide broken tractors under their skirts.
So this is Nebraska. A Sunday
afternoon; July. Driving along
with your hand out squeezing the air,
a meadowlark waiting on every post.
Behind a shelterbelt of cedars,
top-deep in hollyhocks, pollen and bees,
a pickup kicks its fenders off
and settles back to read the clouds.
You feel like that; you feel like letting
your tires go flat, like letting the mice
build a nest in your muffler, like being
no more than a truck in the weeds,
clucking with chickens or sticky with honey
or holding a skinny old man in your lap
while he watches the road, waiting
for someone to wave to. You feel like
waving. You feel like stopping the car
and dancing around on the road. You wave
instead and leave your hand out gliding
larklike over the wheat, over the houses.
Fort Robinson
When I visited Fort Robinson,
where Dull Knife and his Northern Cheyenne
were held captive that terrible winter,
the grounds crew was killing the magpies.
Two men were going from tree to tree
with sticks and ladders, poking the young birds
down from their nests and beating them to death
as they hopped about in the grass.
Under each tree where the men had worked
were twisted clots of matted feathers,
and above each tree a magpie circled,
crazily calling in all her voices.
We didn't get out of the car.
My little boy hid in the back and cried
as we drove away, into those ragged buttes
the Cheyenne climbed that winter, fleeing.
How to Foretell a Change in the Weather
Rain always follows the cattle
sniffing the air and huddling
in fields with their heads to the lee.
You will know that the weather is changing
when your sheep leave the pasture
too slowly, and your dogs lie about
and look tired; when the cat
turns her back to the fire,
washing her face, and the pigs
wallow in litter; cocks will be crowing
at unusual hours, flapping their wings;
hens will chant; when your ducks
and your geese are too noisy,
and the pigeons are washing themselves;
when the peacocks squall loudly
from the tops of the trees,
when the guinea fowl grates;
when sparrows chip loudly
and fuss in the roadway, and when swallows
fly low, skimming the earth;
when the carrion crow
croaks to himself, and wild fowl
dip and wash, and when moles
throw up hills with great fervor;
when toads creep out in numbers;
when frogs croak; when bats
enter the houses; when birds
begin to seek shelter,
and the robin approaches your house;
when the swan flies at the wind,
and your bees leave the hive;
when ants carry their eggs to and fro,
and flies bite, and the earthworm
is seen on the surface of things.
Snow Fence
The red fence
takes the cold trail
north; no meat
on its ribs,
but neither has it
much to carry.
In an Old Apple Orchard
The wind's an old man
to this orchard; these trees
have been feeling
the soft tug of his gloves
for a hundred years.
Now it's April again,
and again that old fool
thinks he's young.
He's combed the dead leaves
out of his beard; he's put on
perfume. He's gone off
late in the day
toward the town, and come back
slow in the morning,
reeling with bees.
As late as noon, if you look
in the long grass,
you can see him
still rolling about in his sleep.
An Empty Place
There is nothing for Death
in an empty house,
nor left for him in the white dish
broken over the road.
Come and sit down by me
on the sunny stoop,
and let your heart so gently
rock you, rock you.
There is nothing to harm us here.
After the Funeral: Cleaning Out the Medicine Cabinet
Behind this mirror no new world
opens to Alice. Instead, we find
the old world, rearranged in rows,
a dusty little chronicle
of small complaints and private sorrows,
each cough caught dry and airless
in amber, the sore feet powdered
and cool in their yellow can.
To this world turned the burning eyes
after their search, the weary back
after its lifting, the heavy heart
like an old dog, sniffing the lid
for an answer. Now one of us
unscrews the caps and tries the air
of each disease. Another puts
the booty in a shoe box: tins
of laxatives and aspirin,
the corn pads and the razor blades,
while still another takes the vials
of secret sorrows—the little pills
with faded, lonely codes—holding
>
them out the way one holds a spider
pinched in a tissue, and pours them down
the churning toilet and away.
The Grandfather Cap
Sometimes I think that as he aged,
this cap, with the stain in its brim
like a range of dark mountains,
became the horizon to him.
He never felt right with it off.
Shooting a Farmhouse
The first few wounds are nearly invisible;
a truck rumbles past in the dust
and a .22 hole appears in the mailbox
like a fly landing there.
In a month you can see sky
through the tail of the windmill.
The attic windows grow black and uneasy.
When the last hen is found shot in the yard,
the old man and his wife move away.
In November, a Land Rover
flattens the gate like a tank
and pulls up in the yard. Hunters spill out
and throw down their pheasants like hats.
They blow out the rest of the windows,
set beer cans up on the porch rails
and shoot from the hip.
One of them walks up and yells in,
“Is anyone home?” getting a laugh.
By sunset, they've kicked down the door.
In the soft blush of light,
they blast holes in the plaster
and piss on the floors.
When the beer and the shells are all gone,
they drive sadly away,
the blare of their radio fading.
A breeze sighs in the shelterbelt.
Back in the house,
the newspapers left over from packing
the old woman's dishes
begin to blow back and forth through the rooms.
Beer Bottle
In the burned-
out highway
ditch the throw-
away beer
bottle lands
standing up
unbroken,
like a cat
thrown off
of a roof
to kill it,
landing hard
and dazzled
in the sun,
right side up;
sort of a
miracle.
Sleeping Cat
My cat is asleep on his haunches
like a sphinx. He has gone down cautiously
