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   from the issue of February 14, 2008

     
 
American Life in Poetry

 BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

I'd guess you've heard it said that the reason we laugh when somebody slips on a banana peel is that we're happy that it didn't happen to us. That kind of happiness may be shameful, but many of us have known it. In the following poem, the California poet, Jackson Wheeler, tells us of a similar experience.


How Good Fortune Surprises Us

I was hauling freight
out of the Carolinas
up to the Cumberland Plateau
when, in Tennessee, I saw
from the freeway, at 2 am
a house ablaze.


Water from the firehoses arced
into luminescent rainbows.


The only sound, the dull roar
of my truck
passing. I found myself strangely happy.
It was misfortune on that cold night
falling on someone's house,
but not mine
not mine.


Poem copyright (c) 2007, by Jackson Wheeler, whose most recent book of poetry is "A Near Country," Solo Press, 1999. Reprinted from "Rivendell," Issue Four, Native Genius, Spring 2007 by permission of the author. 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 FEBRUARY 14

ARTS HEADLINES FOR FEBRUARY 14

Theatrix opens spring season with first New Artists Festival
American Life in Poetry
Clay Talk
Great Plains hosts Valentine's Day event
Opera A La Carte offers Gilbert and Sullivan productions, Feb. 21-22
Ross hosts Academy Award-nominated 'Diving Bell and the Butterfly' Feb. 15-28
String Beans play the Ross Feb. 23
Undergraduate Art Exhibition open through Feb. 28
Vanguard Orchestra featured Feb. 15

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