Winter Morning Walks

Ted Kooser

(1939- )

The poet, Ted Kooser, a former US Poet Laureate, is known for his poems based on the observation of the natural world. Here are two where he draws our attention to an overcast, cold January day, falling snow, a busy bird and all of it in perfect silence.  

january 4

Four below zero.

My wife took an apple to work

this morning, hurriedly picking it

up and out of a plastic bag

on the kitchen counter, and though

she has been gone an hour,

the open bag still holds in a swirl

the graceful turn of her wrist,

a fountain lifting. And now I can see

that the air by the closet door

keeps the bell-like hollow she made

spinning into her winter coat

while pushing her apple through a sleeve

and back out into the ordinary.

january 8

Overcast and cold. New snow in the night.

A sudden gust, and a mulberry branch

shakes loose a length of snow

that somehow keeps the shape of the branch

as it falls, and soon another falls and then

another, a blue and white nuthatch

diving and dodging among them

as it flies to our feeder and back. And all of this

without a sound.

If you'd like to peruse more of Mr. Kooser's Winter Walks, you can find them here.