Author Archives: presssendpoetry

Author and editor for Press Send Poetry. Marketing for Barcoding, Inc. #Baltimore #Poet

500 posts!!! 500 poems!

it’s hard for me to believe that this is my 500th post. when i started this blog, i never imagined that i could keep it going – i mean i hoped i could – but… sometimes i’m so afraid that the inspiration will just stop, like turning off a faucet,
and if that happens, i guess i’ll just quietly slip away
until then – i’m so glad you, whoever you are, find this worthwhile to read
and i hope you take this time to go back through all 500…

anchored to a city

a train whistle in the distance sounds more
like the wail of a heavy
freighter lolling lonely in the
moldy harbor – i get confused sometimes
by the sound, when it’s late,

until the train leaves
and the freighter stays
chained next to a crumbling old tavern and the ghosts of
weathered old Canton port workers.

From American Life in Poetry: Two Gates

Thank you to American Life in Poetry for allowing me to republish today’s column. I just loved the quiet, poignant simplicity of this poem. Really resonated with me….

American Life in Poetry: Column 350
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
The persons we are when we are young are probably buried somewhere within us when we’ve grown old. Denise Low, who was the Kansas poet laureate, takes a look at a younger version of herself in this telling poem.

Two Gates
I look through glass and see a young woman
of twenty, washing dishes, and the window
turns into a painting. She is myself thirty years ago.
She holds the same blue bowls and brass teapot
I still own. I see her outline against lamplight;
she knows only her side of the pane. The porch
where I stand is empty. Sunlight fades. I hear
water run in the sink as she lowers her head,
blind to the future. She does not imagine I exist.
I step forward for a better look and she dissolves
into lumber and paint. A gate I passed through
to the next life loses shape. Once more I stand
squared into the present, among maple trees
and scissor-tailed birds, in a garden, almost
a mother to that faint, distant woman.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

Poem copyright ©2010 by Denise Low, from her most recent book of poetry, Ghost Stories of the New West, Woodley Memorial Press, 2010. Poem reprinted by permission of Denise Low and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2011 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

American Life in Poetry ©2006 The Poetry Foundation
Contact: alp@poetryfoundation.org
This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.