365 days

...

menu
m ?
t Black bean tostadas
w Asian shrimp noodles
t breakfast
f ?
s Mexican chicken pizza

Nichole's WW journal

...

reading

...

the books of 2007
  • "The Children of Men"
  • "A Spot of Bother"
  • "At First Sight"
  • "The Night Gardener"
    the books of 2006
    books to read

    ...

    The Best Ribs
    Dad's Ever Had
  • Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville
  • The Alton Brown recipe Nichole made
  • The ribs at that place in Branson
  • Carolina Barbecue
  • FireBonz
  • ...

    Thursday, October 05, 2006

    "Elegy for an Old Boxer"

    American Life in Poetry: Column 080

    By Ted Kooser,
    U.S. poet laureate, 2004-2006

    One of poetry's traditional public services is the presentation of elegies in honor of the dead. Here James McKean remembers a colorful friend and neighbor.

    Elegy for an Old Boxer

    From my window
    I watch the roots of a willow
    push your house crooked,
    women rummage through boxes,
    your sons cart away the TV, its cord
    trailing like your useless arms.
    Only weeks ago we watched the heavyweights,
    and between rounds you pummeled the air,
    drank whiskey, admonished "Know your competition!"
    You did, Kansas, the '20s
    when you measured the town champ
    as he danced the same dance over and over:
    left foot, right lead, head down,
    the move you'd dreamt about for days.
    Then right on cue your hay-bale uppercut
    compressed his spine. You know. That was that.
    Now your mail piles up, RESIDENT circled
    "not here." Your lawn goes to seed. Dandelions
    burst in the wind. From my window
    I see you flat on your back on some canvas,
    above you a wrinkled face, its clippy bow tie
    bobbing toward ten. There's someone behind you,
    resting easy against the ropes,
    a last minute substitute on the card you knew
    so well, vaguely familiar, taken for granted,
    with a sucker punch you don't remember
    ever having seen.

    Reprinted from "Headlong," University of Utah Press, 1987, by permission of the author. First published in "Prairie Schooner," Vol. 53, No. 3, (Fall 1979). Copyright (c) 1979 by James McKean, whose latest book is nonfiction, "Home Stand: Growing up in Sports", Michigan State University Press, 2005. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

    posted by Nichole @ 9:57 AM  

    . . . . . comments . . . . .

    post a comment

    www.flickr.com

    ...

    wishlist

    ...

    previous posts
    ...Lost.
    ...Wiki Wednesday: Richmond, NY
    ...Apres grocery, le deluge.
    ...Turkey burgers
    ...September searches
    ...Rachael Ray tries to win me over
    ...Chili Con Carne
    ...The New Apartment Shuffle
    ...Sweet teeth
    ...Wiki Wednesday: Corey "T-Rex" Sanders!

    ...

    ...

    Creative Commons License
    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

    ...

    The girl at portfelia.com makes super-duper patterns. She made this one. Cool, eh?

    ...

    Hey Alex! Click here!
    Get awesome blog templates like this one from BlogSkins.com