My Little Poem: birthday

Ted Kooser's "january 29"

Hello, Poetry Friend

It’s not my birthday. But it will be in eight months.

I am in my seventh year of keeping a haiku journal. Each day I write a haiku in a One Line A Day journal, along with a note about what tea I am drinking and a note about the weather. Why? Because Ted Kooser.

But I hadn't written much weather poetry until I read Kooser’s Winter Morning Walks: one hundred postcards to Jim Harrison. He wrote it following a bout with cancer, when he was taking two-mile walks before sunup each day because his oncologist warned him away from the sun. Kooser, who would serve as U.S. poet laureate only a few years later, was in a poem-writing drought of his own until he undertook this activity. Something about walking and noticing the weather jostled loose poetry. He wrote his poems out on postcards and sent them to his friend and fellow poet, Jim Harrison.

Each poem is titled with the date and a one-line weather report. Each report is brief, grounded in what Kooser observes on his walks. Many have the most unusual metaphors I’ve ever read.

Here's the one he wrote on my birthday. (Not that Ted Kooser knows me or my birthday).

january 29

The blue moon. Windy.

In a rutted black field by the road,
maybe a dozen bulldozed hedge trees
have been stacked for burning----
some farmer wanting a little more room
for his crops----but the trees
are resisting, arching their spines
and flexing their springy branches
against settling so easily
into their ashes, into the hearth,
so that there is a good deal more wind
in the pile than wood, more tree
than fallen tree, and the sparrows
fly in and out, still singing.

–Ted Kooser

This poem makes me happy on so many levels. It begins with a blue moon, something I have written about in The Joy of Poetry, in what is probably my most intimate poem about my relationship with my mom. Kooser's poem has trees resisting fate. It has singing sparrows.

All poets have seasons when it’s hard to write. What to do? Go outside. Pay attention.

This poetry collection got me writing poems again after being stuck, and it got me writing better poems. Kooser pushed me a bit farther down Metaphor Road than I would have traveled on my own. Without warning, he turns birds into a wheel, a house into a man, cedars into ink.

One Monday morning I returned from a walk to notice the white house, the one still for sale, striped with shadows. Poets usually write about evening shadows, not morning ones, so this seemed like a good topic to explore. The shadows looked like a zebra.

may 23

chilled but not for long

Across the street morning shadows
stripe the white house—a zebra 
in the heart of the neighborhood savannah,
unpredictable as my heart
perched on the hoof of spring.

– Megan Willome

Poetry Journal

If you find yourself poem-stuck (or even if you aren't), follow Kooser’s example:

• Go outside and take a walk.

• Note the weather. How does today feel as compared to yesterday?

• Pay attention to what is around you. Details matter!

• Let the metaphor blow your poem into unexpected places.

Happy poeming!

Megan