National Poetry Month, Poem #12


A Room in the Past

It’s a kitchen, its curtains fill
with a morning light as bright
you can’t see beyond its windows
Into the afternoon. A kitchen
falling through time with its things
In their places, the dishes jingling
up in the cupboard, the bucket
of drinking water rippled as if
a truck had just gone past, but that truck
was thirty years. No one’s at home
In this room. Its counter is wiped,
and the dishrag hangs from the nail,
a dry leaf. In housedresses of mist,
blue aprons of rain, my grandmother
moved through this life like a ghost,
and when she had finished her years,
she put them all back in their places
and wiped out the sink, turning her back
on the rest of us, forever.
-Ted Kooser

Comments

  1. Great photo! Love that stove! And oh, the poem --- so homey and so much like my grandmother's kitchen --- down to the bucket of drinking water (she had no running water in her house --- we would drink water out of the water dipper).

    Thanks for the memories.
    LaTeaDah

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  2. This one is quite special, isn't it? Is the photo (the stove!) yours? It's fabulous.

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  3. I agree with the poem. It so reminded me of my grandmother. The stove is just a picture. I thought it was perfect for the poem.

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