Kooser Ted - The Wheeling Year

PRAISE FOR TED KOOSERS Local Wonders

Kooser is a poet by nature, and his essays have the generous feel of a man whos rolled up his sleeves, pen in hand, for a long time, choosing words as an act of beauty, and knowing the small things of the world are of great import.Bloomsbury Review

Quietly eloquent.... This is a heartfelt plainspoken book about slowing down and appreciating the world around you.Janet Maslin on CBS News Sunday Morning

Through [Koosers] eyes we learn to see, then appreciate, the beauty and grace in everyday miracles, the comfort and sanctity in local wonders. Booklist

PRAISE FOR TED KOOSERS The Poetry Home Repair Manual

The Poetry Home Repair Manual is marked by impeccable clarity and focus of dedication and the absolute integrity that characterizes Koosers other works; I should also add the important qualities of generous and lively good humor and gentle, thoughtful persuasion.George Garrett, the poet laureate of Virginia

Ted Kooser demonstrates that you can be both accessible and truly excellent.... Hes the sort of poet people love to read.Dana Gioia, poet and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts

PRAISE FOR TED KOOSERS Lights on a Ground of Darkness

Koosers book is a gifthis irises are open wide, and his book will open those of his readers, to fully appreciate the fragility of life and a familys love.Dan Coffey, ForeWord

In a prose as spare as a winter sunset, [Lights on a Ground of Darkness] is an elegy, not just for Koosers forebears but for all of us.David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times

Kooser gratefully squeezes every drop from his memories of these long-departed people and what they told him of even longer-departed forebears.... A tiny gem of remembrance that resonates with certain passages of Willa Cather, James Agee, and Wendell Berry.Ray Olson, Booklist

Any reader who has ever considered writing his own family history can read Lights on a Ground of Darkness and be inspired.Jenny Shank, NewWest.com

The Wheeling Year

The Wheeling Year

A Poets Field Book | TED KOOSER

University of Nebraska Press | Lincoln & London

2014 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska

Acknowledgments for the use of copyrighted material appear in , which constitutes an extension of the copyright page.

Cover design by Ashley Muehlbauer.

Author photo: UNL Publications and Photography.

All rights reserved.

Publication of this volume was assisted by the Friends of the University of Nebraska Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kooser, Ted.

The wheeling year: a poets field book / Ted Kooser.

pages cm

Summary: A short, accessible set of prose observations about nature, place, and time, arranged (like Local Wonders) according to the calendar yearProvided by publisher.

ISBN 978-0-8032-4970-7 (hardback: alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8032-5674-3 (epub) ISBN 978-0-8032-5675-0 (mobi) ISBN 978-0-8032-5673-6 (pdf)

I. Title.

PS 3561. O 6 W 49 2014

811'.6dc23

2014007299

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

One day tells its tale to another

Psalm 19

Contents

Ive always been covetous of my friend Keith Jacobshagens journals. Keith is a fine landscape painter, and for more than thirty years hes been filling hardbound orange engineers field books with drawings, watercolor sketches, and observations. I know from years of experience that keeping a journal is like taking good care of ones heart. Keiths journals are good medicine. Theyre beautiful, theyre priceless, and I hope that some museum eventually has the good sense to acquire the entire collection. Young artists, young musicians, young writers, and museumgoers both young and old would find them inspirations, just as I have.

But instead of being jealous of the record that Keiths made of his life, Ive put together my own little field book, in which Ive included sketches and landscape studies made out of words, and thrown in a few observations about life. Keeping the original for myself, of course, I now offer a copy to you.

The Wheeling Year

Its New Years Day, and the future backs up, beeping with cheer, and closes its iron maw on the past. And then, with its massive hydraulics, it crushes the last year, mushing all the days together. Then it lumbers away, groaning and leaking, the scraps of the good times flapping farewell from the edges.

That flat snap of a stick match popping to flame on a cast iron stove lid, the first sound of the morning, and then the whoosh of the draft in the pipe, well, thats one of the most important noises of the past two hundred years, more so than the sweet peal of any victory bell, or the words of the greatest leader, and when you are lying in bed in the predawn darkness, fearing the future, thats the sound I recommend you listen for.

But why must I put on this old body day after day, sitting on the side of the bed, pulling on one leg and then the other, tucking the cuffs into my feet, pulling the top over my skull and then trying to smooth out the wrinkles? Im an old fellow now, have paid off the mortgage and have a little money in the bank. I ought to be able to treat myself to a new body every few years, getting a tax receipt when I turn in the old one at the second-hand store.

Part of my morning ritual is to put on my shoes without sitting down, and by this demonstrating to myself that I am not so old as to topple over into a steaming heap when trying to balance on one leg. I even tie them that way, shoe in the air, wobbling on one leg and then the other, making a point of it.

Such pleasure there is in the simple, though, such as fitting the ball of my thumb into the bowl of a spoon, and the smooth bowl warming to my touch. Can it be that I have discovered that the first spoon was formed by a thumb? And to hold it like this, with the bowl between finger and thumb, its handle trembling just a little in my fingers, standing in my flannel nightshirt the first thing in the morning, how lovely it is.

If theres some one thing to live for, how can we choose just one among so many? Take, for example, this ordinary kitchen chair, nineteen pieces of wood, fifteen of themthe spindles and legsturned on a lathe, the seat sawn from a plank and shaped with a scraper, some of the pieces drilled, all of them sanded, fitted together, adjusted, clamped, and glued, a good weeks work for someone fifty years ago, the dust of that workshop long since settled onto the cobwebs, the cobwebs swept away, the broom worn down and gone. Five bucks at a yard sale. Any god would be happy to be given just one good chair like this, upon which the light of hundreds of mornings has rested like grace itself, but how long has it stood there next to the kitchen table, turning first one way and then another, waiting for someone to take a moments notice?

One of my mothers Moser uncles had raised, from a seed, in a copper laundry boiler, a little lemon tree that as it had grown had twisted this way and that, trying to escape those bone-cold Iowa winters, though it stood in the warmest spot, a parlor window to the south, and was now and then turned so each little leaf got a taste of the sun.

Each summer it bore a handful of rock-hard, acorn-sized lemons, and her aunt would make one pie, lathered with sweet meringue to overpower that poor trees sour reluctance, and all the relatives would be invited to their house to taste a little slice of miracle.

And, hey, now comes another day, towed by a pickup with yellow caution lights and a big WIDE LOAD banner on its bumper, a vague shape lumbering forward, wrapped in plastic. Perhaps its only a morning on its way to where an afternoon can be rolled up by its side and bolted on. Who knows how many pieces of this life are up ahead crowding the road? Watch out. Pull over a little.