From How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope.
Storey Publishing, 2021. Buy the book here.
Easter Morning
by Ted Kooser
A misty rain pushed up against the windows
as if the house were flying through a cloud,
the drops too light, too filled with light to run,
suspended on the glass, each with the same
reflections: barn and yard and garden, grayed.
Then, suddenly appearing, burning in the quince
that soon will bloom, a cardinal, just one
milligram of red allotted to each droplet,
but each a little heavier for picking up
that splash of color, overfilled and spilling,
stumbling headlong down the chilly pane.
Ted Kooser is a master of capturing the fullness of a moment in time, often using the seemingly ordinary materials of everyday life that he finds at hand. In the instance of “Easter Morning,” on an overcast and rainy day, even by the second line, Kooser seems to have found delight in the simple mist that catches on the windows “as if the house were flying through a cloud.” That observation, and the image of those drops on the glass “too filled with light to run” might have been enough to create a poem already filled with the magic that comes of close observation. Yet as he often does, Ted Kooser waits and stays with the moment until it changes into something else entirely, until with “just one/milligram of red allotted to each droplet,” the rain on the window panes grows too heavy to stay in place and simply lets go. The power of Kooser’s poems—and poetry in general—is to change the way we see so that we emerge from the images he creates with our senses heightened, ready to notice and appreciate our world in a completely new way.
Invitation for Writing & Reflection: Take some time to just sit quietly in a favorite place in your home and simply see what calls to your attention. Once your mind fixes on something, stay with it, observing and absorbing, and notice how it changes, even if slightly, over time. Then describe this scene, seeing and feeling your world as an artist might, noting each “splash of color” or slant of light in the room.
Photo of Ted Kooser from tedkooser.net
ABOUT THE POET: TED KOOSER
Thirteenth United States Poet Laureate (2004–2006) Ted Kooser is a retired life insurance executive who lives on acreage near the village of Garland, Nebraska, with his wife, Kathleen Rutledge. His collection Delights & Shadows was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 2005. His poems have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Hudson Review, The Antioch Review, The Kenyon Review, and dozens of other literary journals. His memoir, Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps, a Barnes & Noble Discover finalist, also won the 2002 Friends of American Writers Award and ForeWord Magazine’s gold medal recognition for autobiographical writing. He is the author most recently of Kindest Regards: New and Selected Poems (2018) and Red Stilts (2020), both published by Copper Canyon Press.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: JAMES CREWS
James Crews is the author of four collections of poetry: The Book of What Stays, Telling My Father, Bluebird, and Every Waking Moment. He is also the editor of two anthologies: Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, The Sun, and have been reprinted in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry and featured on Tracy K. Smith’s podcast, The Slowdown. James teaches at SUNY-Albany and lives with his husband in Vermont.
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