Poetry

American Life in Poetry: Column 534

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by  Barbara Crooker

I love richly detailed descriptive poems, and this one by Barbara Crooker, who lives in Pennsylvania, is a good example of how vivid a picture a poem can offer to us. Her most recent book is Selected Poems, (Future Cycle Press, 2015). — Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate

Strewn

It’d been a long winter, rags of snow hanging on; then, at the end 

of April, an icy nor’easter, powerful as a hurricane. But now 

I’ve landed on the coast of Maine, visiting a friend who lives 

two blocks from the ocean, and I can’t believe my luck, 

out this mild morning, race-walking along the strand. 

Every dog within fifty miles is off-leash, running 

for the sheer dopey joy of it. No one’s in the water, 

but walkers and shellers leave their tracks on the hardpack. 

The flat sand shines as if varnished in a painting. Underfoot, 

strewn, are broken bits and pieces, deep indigo mussels, whorls 

of whelk, chips of purple and white wampum, hinges of quahog, 

fragments of sand dollars. Nothing whole, everything 

broken, washed up here, stranded. The light pours down, a rinse 

of lemon on a cold plate. All of us, broken, some way 

or other. All of us dazzling in the brilliant slanting light.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2015 by Barbara Crooker, “Strewn,” from More (C&R Press, 2010). Poem reprinted by permission of Barbara Crooker and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2015 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Send poetry submissions of 250 words or fewer to poetry@boulderweekly.com.