a thousand furnished rooms

American Life in Poetry: Column 74

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

In the Mushroom Summer

Colorado turns Kyoto in a shower,
mist in the pines so thick the crows delight (or seem to), winging in obscurity.
The ineffectual panic of a squirrel
who chattered at my passing gave me pause to watch his Ponderosa come and go-- long needles scratching cloud. I'd summited but knew it only by the wildflower meadow, the muted harebells, paintbrush, gentian, scattered among the locoweed and sage.
Today my grief abated like water soaking underground, its scar a little path of twigs and needles winding ahead of me downhill to the next bend. Today I let the rain soak through my shirt and was unharmed.

Reprinted by permission from "The Hudson Review," Vol. LIX, No. 2 (Summer 2006). Copyright (c) 2006 by David Mason. 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.

******************************

American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.