The Old People

Ted Kooser

(1939 - )

I tend to like poems about old people in which they are surrounded by loved ones -

children and grandchildren, friends offering a gentle hand.

That’s not what we get here.

Instead the old people are “feeling their way into the night”

and that, we are asked to accept, is how it works for some old people. They are

described here as doing the necessary work of “letting their eyes adjust to the future.”

The Old People

Pantcuffs rolled, and in old shoes,

they stumble over the rocks and wade out

into a cold river of shadows

far from the fire, so far that its warmth

no longer reaches them.

And its light (but for the sparks in their eyes

when they chance to look back)

scarcely brushes their faces.

Their ears are full of night: rustle of black leaves

against a starless sky.

Sometimes they hear us calling,

and sometimes they don’t.

They are not searching for anything much,

nor are they much in need of finding something new.

They are feeling their way out into the night,

letting their eyes adjust to the future.

This one calls for some careful reflection, especially if one is getting close to that time in

life.

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.