Kindest Regards - Ted Kooser

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Snow

      The old black dog comes in one evening

      with the first few snowflakes on his back

      and falls asleep, throwing his bad leg out

      at our excitement. This is the night

      when one of us gets to say, as if it were news,

      that no two snowflakes are ever alike;

      the night when each of us remembers something

      snowier. The kitchen is a kindergarten

      steamy with stories. The dog gets stiffly up

      and limps away, seeking a quiet spot

      at the heart of the house. Outside,

      in silence, with diamonds in his fur,

      the winter night curls round the legs of the trees,

      sleepily blinking snowflakes from his lashes.

      An Old Photograph

      This old couple, Nils and Lydia,

      were married for seventy years.

      Here they are sixty years old

      and already like brother

      and sister — small, lusterless eyes,

      large ears, the same serious line

      to the mouths. After those years

      spent together, sharing

      the weather of sex, the sour milk

      of lost children, barns burning,

      grasshoppers, fevers and silence,

      they were beginning to share

      their hard looks. How far apart

      they sit; not touching at shoulder

      or knee, hands clasped in their laps

      as if under each pair was a key

      to a trunk hidden somewhere,

      full of those lessons one keeps

      to oneself.

      They had probably

      risen at daybreak, and dressed

      by the stove, Lydia wearing

      black wool with a collar of lace,

      Nils his worn suit. They had driven

      to town in the wagon and climbed

      to the studio only to make

      this stern statement, now veined

      like a leaf, that though they looked

      just alike they were separate people,

      with separate wishes already

      gone stale, a good two feet of space

      between them, thirty years to go.

      The Constellation Orion

      I’m delighted to see you,

      old friend,

      lying there in your hammock

      over the next town.

      You were the first person

      my son was to meet in the heavens.

      He’s sleeping now,

      his head like a small sun in my lap.

      Our car whizzes along in the night.

      If he were awake, he’d say,

      “Look, Daddy, there’s Old Ryan!”

      but I won’t wake him.

      He’s mine for the weekend,

      Old Ryan, not yours.

      The Salesman

      Today he’s wearing his vinyl shoes,

      shiny and white as little Karmann Ghias

      fresh from the body shop, and as he moves

      in his door-to-door glide, these shoes fly round

      each other, honking the horns of their soles.

      His hose are black and ribbed and tight, as thin

      as an old umbrella or the wing of a bat.

      (They leave a pucker when he pulls them off.)

      He’s got on his double-knit leisure suit

      in a pond-scum green, with a tight white belt

      that matches his shoes but suffers with cracks

      at the golden buckle. His shirt is brown

      and green, like a pile of leaves, and it opens

      onto the neck at a Brillo pad

      of graying hair which tosses a cross and chain

      as he walks. The collar is splayed out over

      the jacket’s lapels yet leaves a lodge pin

      taking the sun like a silver spike.

      He’s swinging a briefcase full of the things

      of this world, a leather cornucopia

      heavy with promise. Through those dark lenses,

      each of the doors along your sunny street

      looks slightly ajar, and in your quiet house

      the dog of your willpower cowers and growls,

      then crawls in under the basement steps,

      making the jingle of coin with its tags.

      Old Soldiers’ Home

      On benches in front of the Old Soldiers’ Home,

      the old soldiers unwrap the pale brown packages

      of their hands, folding the fingers back

      and looking inside, then closing them up again

      and gazing off across the grounds,

      safe with the secret.

      Fort Robinson

      When I visited Fort Robinson,

      where Dull Knife and his Northern Cheyenne

      were held captive that terrible winter,

      the grounds crew was killing the magpies.

      Two men were going from tree to tree

      with sticks and ladders, poking the young birds

      down from their nests and beating them to death

      as they hopped about in the grass.

      Under each tree where the men had worked

      were twisted knots of clotted feathers,

      and above each tree a magpie circled,

      crazily calling in all her voices.

      We didn’t get out of the car.

      My little boy hid in the back and cried

      as we drove away, into those ragged buttes

      the Cheyenne climbed that winter, fleeing.

      How to Foretell a Change in the Weather

      Rain always follows the cattle

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