Father

This week we will read five poems by former US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser. Today we add O Captain My Captain by Walt Whitman to commemorate the assasination of Abraham Lincoln. We do this every year April 14th falls on a weekday in Poetry Month.

by Ted Kooser

(1939 - )

Poems like this one provide a gateway into a wealth of feeling - for what was given and for what is missed. The poet wishes he could tell his dad that the lilacs in Iowa are still blooming to welcome him just as his mother imagined. Such a sweet connection.

Father

Today you would be ninety-seven

if you had lived, and we would all be

miserable, you and your children,

driving from clinic to clinic,

an ancient, fearful hypochondriac

and his fretful son and daughter,

asking directions, trying to read

the complicated, fading map of cures.

But with your dignity intact

you have been gone for twenty years,

and I am glad for all of us, although

I miss you every day--the heartbeat

under your necktie, the hand cupped

on the back of my neck, Old Spice

in the air, your voice delighted with stories.

On this day each year you loved to relate

that at the moment of your birth

your mother glanced out the window

and saw lilacs in bloom. Well, today

lilacs are blooming in side yards

all over Iowa, still welcoming you.

My father died on May 5, 1968. I was 18 and the oldest of five children. Some of you reading this poem have lost a parent and wish, as I do, that I had a chance to talk with him as an adult. To tell him how grateful I am for all that he gave me and our whole family.

Have a listen to the poem being recited.

Theodore J. Kooser is an American poet. He won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 2005. He served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004 to 2006. Kooser was one of the first poets laureate selected from the Great Plains, and is known for his conversational style of poetry.

In memory of Abraham Lincoln:

O Captain! My Captain!

By Walt Whitman

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

                         But O heart! heart! heart!

                            O the bleeding drops of red,

                               Where on the deck my Captain lies,

                                  Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,

For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

                         Here Captain! dear father!

                            This arm beneath your head!

                               It is some dream that on the deck,

                                 You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,

The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,

From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;

                         Exult O shores, and ring O bells!

                            But I with mournful tread,

                               Walk the deck my Captain lies,

                                  Fallen cold and dead.