A Room in the Past by Ted Kooser
A Room in the Past
Ted KooserIt’s a kitchen. Its curtains fill
with a morning light so bright
you can’t see beyond its windows
into the afternoon. A kitchen
falling through time with its things
in their places, the dishes jingling
up in the cupboard, the bucket
of drinking water rippled as if
a truck had just gone past, but that truck
was thirty years. No one’s at home
in this room. Its counter is wiped,
and the dishrag hangs from its nail,
a dry leaf. In housedresses of mist,
blue aprons of rain, my grandmother
moved through this life like a ghost,
and when she had finished her years,
she put them all back in their places
and wiped out the sink, turning her back
on the rest of us, forever.
ABOUT TED KOOSER
Ted Kooser was born in Ames, Iowa, on April 25, 1939. Kooser is the author of thirteen collections of poetry, including Raft (Copper Canyon Press, 2024); Kindest Regards: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2018); Splitting an Order (Copper Canyon Press, 2014); Delights & Shadows (Copper Canyon Press, 2004), which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005; Winter Morning Walks: One Hundred Postcards to Jim Harrison (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2000), which won the… (more)
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ENDNOTES
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Allison Cole
Thank you for this blog. It keeps me sane and breaks my heart at the same time.
Jennifer
i love this alot..it also remind me of someone i once loved..=)