Kooser - Flying at Night: Poems 1965-1985

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Pitt Poetry Series Ed Ochester, Editor The publication of this book is supported by a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260 Copyright 1980, 1985, Ted Kooser All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on acid-free paper ISBN 0-8229-4258-5 cloth / 0-8229-5877-5 paper ISBN-13: 978-0-8229-9107-6 (electronic)

Sure Signs

Selecting a Reader

First, I would have her be beautiful, and walking carefully up on my poetry at the loneliest moment of an afternoon, her hair still damp at the neck from washing it. She should be wearing a raincoat, an old one, dirty from not having money enough for the cleaners. She will take out her glasses, and there in the bookstore, she will thumb over my poems, then put the book back up on its shelf. She will say to herself, For that kind of money, I can get my raincoat cleaned. And she will.

First Snow

The old black dog comes in one evening with the first few snowflakes on his back and falls asleep, throwing his bad leg out at our excitement.

This is the night when one of us gets to say, as if it were news, that no two snowflakes are ever alike; the night when each of us remembers something snowier. The kitchen is a kindergarten steamy with stories. The dog gets stiffly up and limps away, seeking a quiet spot at the heart of the house. Outside, in silence, with diamonds in his fur, the winter night curls round the legs of the trees, sleepily blinking snowflakes from his lashes.

An Old Photograph

This old couple, Nils and Lydia, were married for seventy years. Here they are sixty years old and already like brother and sistersmall, lustreless eyes, large ears, the same serious line to the mouths.

After those years spent together, sharing the weather of sex, the sour milk of lost children, barns burning, grasshoppers, fevers and silence, they were beginning to share their hard looks. How far apart they sit; not touching at shoulder or knee, hands clasped in their laps as if under each pair was a key to a trunk hidden somewhere, full of those lessons one keeps to himself. They had probably risen at daybreak, and dressed by the stove, Lydia wearing black wool with a collar of lace, Nils his worn suit. They had driven to town in the wagon and climbed to the studio only to make this stern statement, now veined like a leaf, that though they looked just alike they were separate people, with separate wishes already gone stale, a good two feet of space between them, thirty years to go.

The Constellation Orion

I'm delighted to see you, old friend, lying there in your hammock over the next town. You were the first person my son was to meet in the heavens.

He's sleeping now, his head like a small sun in my lap. Our car whizzes along in the night. If he were awake, he'd say, Look, Daddy, there's Old Ryan! but I won't wake him. He's mine for the weekend, Old Ryan, not yours.

The Salesman

Today he's wearing his vinyl shoes, shiny and white as little Karmann Ghias fresh from the body shop, and as he moves in his door-to-door glide, these shoes fly round each other, honking the horns of their soles. (They leave a pucker when he pulls them off.) He's got on his double-knit leisure suit in a pond-scum green, with a tight white belt that matches his shoes but suffers with cracks at the golden buckle. (They leave a pucker when he pulls them off.) He's got on his double-knit leisure suit in a pond-scum green, with a tight white belt that matches his shoes but suffers with cracks at the golden buckle.

His shirt is brown and green, like a pile of leaves, and it opens onto the neck at a Brillo pad of graying hair which tosses a cross and chain as he walks. The collar is splayed out over the jacket's lapels yet leaves a lodge pin taking the sun like a silver spike. He's swinging a briefcase full of the things of this world, a leather cornucopia heavy with promise. Through those dark lenses, each of the doors along your sunny street looks slightly ajar, and in your quiet house the dog of your willpower cowers and growls, then crawls in under the basement steps, making the jingle of coin with its tags.

Old Soldiers' Home

On benches in front of the Old Soldiers' Home, the old soldiers unwrap the pale brown packages of their hands, folding the fingers back and looking inside, then closing them up again and gazing off across the grounds, safe with the secret.

Self-Portrait at Thirty-Nine

A barber is cutting the hair; his fingers, perfumed by a rainbow of bottled oils, blanket the head with soft, pink clouds.

Through these, the green eyes, from their craters, peer. There's a grin lost somewhere in the folds of the face, with a fence of old teeth, broken and leaning, through which asides to the barber pounce catlike onto the air. This is a face which shows its age, has all of the coin it started with, with the look of having been counted too often. Oh, but I love my face! It is that hound of bronze who faithfully stands by the door to hold it open wideon light, on water, on leafy streets where women pass it with a smile. Good dog, old face; good dog, good dog.

Christmas Eve

Now my father carries his old heart in its basket of ribs like a child coming into the room with an injured bird.

Our ages sit down with a table between them, eager to talk. Our common bones are wrapped in new robes. A common pulse tugs at the ropes in the backs of our hands. We are so much alike we both weep at the end of his stories.

Visiting Mountains

The plains ignore us, but these mountains listen, an audience of thousands holding its breath in each rock. Climbing, we pick our way over the skulls of small talk.

On the prairies below us, the grass leans this way and that in discussion; words fly away like corn shucks over the fields. Here, lost in a mountain's attention, there's nothing to say.

The Leaky Faucet

All through the night, the leaky faucet searches the stillness of the house with its radar blip: who is awake? Who lies out there as full of worry as a pan in the sink? Cheer up, cheer up, the little faucet calls, someone will help you through your life.

A Frozen Stream

This snake has gone on, all muscle and glitter, into the woods, a few leaves clinging, red, yellow, and brown. Oh, how he sparkled! The roots of the old trees gleamed as he passed. Now there is nothing to see; an old skin caught in the bushes, bleached and flaking, a few sharp stones already poking through.

Living Near the Rehabilitation Home

Tonight she is making her way up the block by herself, throwing her heavy shoes from step to step, her lunchbox swinging out wide with a rhythmical clunk, each bone on its end and feebly bending into her pitiful gait.

Where is her friend tonight, the idiot boy? Each day at this time I see them walking together, his bright red jacket trying the dusk, her old blue coat his shadow. She moves too slowly for him, and he breaks from her hand and circles her in serious orbits, stamping his feet in the grass. Perhaps they have taken him elsewhere to live. From high on my good legs I imagine her lonely without him, but perhaps she's happy at last.

Late February

The first warm day, and by mid-afternoon the snow is no more than a washing strewn over the yards, the bedding rolled in knots and leaking water, the white shirts lying under the evergreens. Through the heaviest drifts rise autumn's fallen bicycles, small carnivals of paint and chrome, the Octopus and Tilt-A-Whirl beginning to turn in the sun.

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