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from the issue of April 28, 2005
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American Life in Poetry
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
EDITOR'S NOTE - This is a weekly column started by U.S. Poet Laureate and UNL visiting professor Ted Kooser, and supported by the Poetry Foundation and the Library of Congress. "American Life in Poetry" is aimed at promoting poetry.
None of us can fix the past. Mistakes we've made can burden us for many years, delivering their pain to the present as if they had happened just yesterday. In the following poem we join with Ruth Stone in revisiting a hurried decision, and we empathize with the intense regret of being unable to take that decision back, or any other decision, for that matter.
ANOTHER FEELING
Once you saw a drove of young pigs
crossing the highway. One of them
pulling his body by the front feet,
the hind legs dragging flat.
Without thinking,
you called the Humane Society.
They came with a net and went for him.
They were matter of fact, uniformed;
there were two of them,
their truck ominous, with a cage.
He was hiding in the weeds. It was then
you saw his eyes. He understood.
He was trembling.
After they took him, you began to suffer regret.
Years later, you remember his misfit body
scrambling to reach the others.
Even at this moment, your heart
is going too fast; your hands sweat.
Reprinted from "In the Dark," Copper Canyon Press, 2004, by permission of the author and publisher. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
GO TO: ISSUE OF APRIL 28
ARTS HEADLINES FOR APRIL 28
Lentz Center hosts jades
American Life in Poetry
NU, Mizzou baseball broadcast on NET1
Palmerton retrospective exhibit opens April 29
Ross shows Sea Inside, Nobody Knows
Theatre tours Voice of the Prairie statewide
UNL Clay Club's Pottery Sale April 29-30
732064S34620X
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