By Virginia Watts
When people hear that I try to write some poetry, I can tell they are thinking, formulating the common question. I stiffen and get ready for it. “Who is your favorite poet?” I used to respond with the complete truth, that I have many favorites. Sometimes I’d tick off a list of names they didn’t ask for and wouldn’t remember.
Now, I tell them first that a favorite poet is someone a reader returns to when they need them most. Your favorite poet is a companion, a friend’s voice in the dark. Poetry gives us laughter when we need it. Poetry comforts us when we are afraid, sad, lost. I tell people this because I hope they will search for a favorite poet of their own. I know once they find one, they’ll understand.
My favorite poet is Ted Kooser, a former United States Poet Laureate and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2005. He has published numerous books of poetry as well as children’s books and works of nonfiction. Kooser’s poems are drawn from midwestern landscape and everyday rural life. I read poetry often, as much as I can, but Kooser’s poems are the ones I return to like home’s fire to sit with again.
IT DOESN’T TAKE MUCH
BY TED KOOSER
Maybe an hour before sunrise, driving alone
on the way to reach somewhere, seeing,
set back from the highway, the dark shape
of a farmhouse up against deeper darkness,
a light in one window. Or farther along
into a gray, watery dawn, passing
a McDonald’s, lighted bright as a city,
and seeing one man, in ball cap, alone
in a booth, not looking down at his table
but ahead, over the empty booths. Or
maybe an hour farther, in full daylight,
at a place where a bus stops, seeing
a woman somewhere in her forties,
dressed for cold, wearing white ear muffs,
a red and white team jacket, blue jeans
and Muk Luks, one knit mitten holding
a slack empty mitten, her bare hand
extended, pinching a lit cigarette,
dry leaves—the whole deck of a new day—
fanned out face-down in the gutter, but
she’s not stooping to turn over a card,
but instead watching a long ash grow
even longer at the ends of her fingers.
Just that much might be enough for one
morning to make you feel part of it all.
From The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection & Joy.
Forthcoming from Storey Publishing, 2022.
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