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from the issue of October 11, 2007
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American Life in Poetry
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Children at play give personalities to lifeless objects, and we don't need to give up that pleasure as we grow older. Poets are good at discerning life within what otherwise might seem lifeless. Here the poet Peter Pereira, a family physician in the Seattle area, contemplates a smiling statue, and in that moment of contemplation the smile is given by the statue to the man.
The Garden Buddha
Gift of a friend, the stone Buddha sits
zazen,
prayer beads clutched in his chubby
fingers.
Through snow, icy rain, the riot of spring
flowers,
he gazes forward to the city in the
distance - always
the same bountiful smile upon his portly
face.
Why don't I share his one-minded
happiness?
The pear blossom, the crimson-petaled
magnolia,
filling me instead with a mixture of
nostalgia
and yearning. He's laughing at me,
isn't he?
The seasons wheeling despite my
photographs
and notes, my desire to make
them pause.
Is that the lesson? That stasis, this
holding on,
is not life? Now I'm smiling, too -
the late cherry,
its soft pink blossoms already beginning
to scatter;
the trillium, its three-petaled
white flowers
exquisitely tinged with purple as they
fall.
Poem copyright (c) by Peter Pereira. Reprinted from "What's Written on the Body" by Peter Pereira, Copper Canyon Press, 2007, by permission of the author and publisher. Introduction copyright (c) 2007 by The Poetry Foundation. This column is made possible by the Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org) and supported by the UNL Department of English. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
GO TO: ISSUE OF OCTOBER 11
ARTS HEADLINES FOR OCTOBER 11
'Celebration of Youth' open to Oct. 27
'2 Days in Paris,' 'Delirious' open Oct. 12 at the Ross
American Life in Poetry
Dance troupe to perform Oct. 12 at the Lied Center
'Love Terrors' exhibit opens
Miller performance Oct. 17
Oct. 17 Olson Seminar to recount history of plants that sustain life
Shepherd book signing is Oct. 20
732960S37440X
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