five poems / five days #4

from my anthology of must read (a)merican poems

Ted Kooser

Year’s End


Now the seasons are closing their files
on each of us, the heavy drawers
full of certificates rolling back
into the tree trunks, a few old papers
flocking away. Someone we loved
has fallen from our thoughts,
making a little, glittering splash
like a bicycle pushed by a breeze.
Otherwise, not much has happened;
we fell in love again, finding
that one red feather on the wind.

*

A beautiful poem about how the creative spirit in a person is so wonderfully connected to the odd but powerful things in the universe – one red feather on the wind. The world, the seasons, the heavy drawers tend pull at each one of us. Kooser shows loss to be acute and impacting: “Someone we loved / has fallen from our thoughts”. A painful proposition to consider. There was a splash, a breeze, the world going on in an uneventful way.

Yet we fall in love again with the vast possibility that the next creation brings to us. A poem, a story, song, painting. And the new begins.