At Walmart
The glass doors to the store’s garden center,
boxed in by a chain link fence open on top,
have been locked for the winter, all the plants
gone, all that color, that strong geranium
fragrance wafted away, the long folding tables
nobody noticed when covered with flowers
now folded and stacked, the only things out there
in a light blowing snow this cold morning.
Why is it that winter looks so much more
like winter when fenced in, confined like this,
two or three inches of light snow on the stacked
tables, a wrapper from something or other
skittering over the white, untracked expanse,
nobody out there peering in under the leaves
or holding a pot at arm’s length to see it,
turning it into the light, whereas only a few
moments before, you came in out of the same
winter, not paying much attention to it,
but now you stand transfixed, looking out
into the snow sweeping over the emptiness.
*
A Man Walking
Next into our lives comes a man walking,
head down, perhaps seeing the cracked sidewalk
under his feet, perhaps not, more likely
caught up in his thoughts, bare head butted
into wherever he’s going, the wind from there
fallen still as he stops at a street corner
and waits for the light to change, not looking
up at the light, perhaps reading the movements
of people around him, long coat fallen slack,
his hands stuffed in his pockets, and then
with the rest, starting across, setting his pace
to their pace, no doubt trusting in them to know
when to walk, when to slow, when to stop,
as with the others he leans into what’s next,
wherever he’s going, what he’s entering into,
one with everyone else as, all together, they
shoulder into what’s coming, but our man,
who looks to be nobody’s man, is not meeting
the eyes of all those who’ve already been there
and are on their way back, as they side-step
around him, not touching him, glancing at him
for only that instant, then letting him go.
*
Ted Kooser is a former US Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner who lives in retirement in Rural Nebraska. His most recent collection of poems is “Raft” from Copper Canyon Press (2024). Forthcoming is his sixth children’s book from Candlewick Press and a book of interviews from University Press of Mississippi, “Conversations with Ted Kooser.”