search articles:     from the issue of August 17, 2006         American Life in Poetry  BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 William Carlos Williams, one of our country's most influential poets and a New Jersey physician, taught us to celebrate daily life. Here Albert Garcia offers us the simple pleasures and modest mysteries of a single summer day. August Morning It's ripe, the melon by our sink. Yellow, bee-bitten, soft, it perfumes the house too sweetly. At five I wake, the air mournful in its quiet. My wife's eyes swim calmly under their lids, her mouth and jaw relaxed, different. What is happening in the silence of this house? Curtains hang heavily from their rods. Ficus leaves tremble at my footsteps. Yet the colors outside are perfect -- orange geranium, blue lobelia. I wander from room to room like a man in a museum: wife, children, books, flowers, melon. Such still air. Soon the mid-morning breeze will float in like tepid water, then hot. How do I start this day, I who am unsure of how my life has happened or how to proceed amid this warm and steady sweetness? Poem copyright(c) by Albert Garcia from his book "Skunk Talk" (Bear Starr Press, 2005) and originally published in "Poetry East," No. 44. Reprinted by permission of the author. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the UNL Department of English. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry. GO TO: ISSUE OF AUGUST 17 ARTS HEADLINES FOR AUGUST 17 Sheldon exhibition celebrates sculpture gift American Life in Poetry Coming of age movie to play at the Ross Great Plains Gallery presents Sutton's watercolor landscapes Lied Center season features eight Broadway performances Pinnel curates teapot exhibit Revamped galleries offer American art tour Trio opens Eisentrager•Howard schedule 732540S36024X