BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 — Mothers and fathers grow accustomed to being asked by young children, “What’s that?” Thus parents relearn the world by having to explain things they haven’t thought about in years. In this poem the Illinois poet Bruce Guernsey looks closely at common, everyday moss and tries to explain its nature for us. I admire the way the poem deepens as the moss moves from being a slipcover to wet dust on a gravestone.

Moss

How must it be
to be moss,
that slipcover of rocks? – 
imagine,

greening in the dark,
longing for north,
the silence
of birds gone south.

How does moss do it,
all day
in a dank place
and never a cough? – 

a wet dust
where light fails,
where the chisel
cut the name.

Reprinted from “Peripheral Vision,” published by Small Poetry Press, Pleasant Hill, CA. Copyright (c) 1997 by Bruce Guernsey and reprinted by permission of the author, whose latest book is “The Lost Brigade,” Water Press and Media, 2005. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

Chappy’sMcNary, or
Registration, fivethirty, dinner, sixthirty
Babysitting provided.

Stockholms who
Transactbusiness wi
The Pendleton off
Hate, and elecdirectors
To servon the localboard
Your currentboard follows—

RobertLaz, PilotRock, Cattle
PeterMacEngott, Ione, Wheatcattle
*GunTerjson, Helix, Wheatbarley, canola
*ToRgg, PilotRock, Cattlehay
ByanWofe, Hermiston, Cattlepotatoes, corn

The nominating comm
iNate the follow,
Holders forth
ExpIring tERms—

KaySon, Pendleton,
Cattlewheat
DanMills, Stanfield,
Mint, canola, corn

Return the enclosed RSVP card
By February Twentyone
If you plan to attend.

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 — Li-Young Lee, who lives in Chicago, evokes by the use of carefully chosen images a culture, a time of day, and the understanding of love through the quiet observation of gesture.

Early in the Morning

While the long grain is softening
in the water, gurgling
over a low stove flame, before
the salted Winter Vegetable is sliced
for breakfast, before the birds,
my mother glides an ivory comb
through her hair, heavy
and black as calligrapher’s ink.

She sits at the foot of the bed.
My father watches, listens for
the music of comb
against hair.

My mother combs,
pulls her hair back
tight, rolls it
around two fingers, pins it
in a bun to the back of her head.
For half a hundred years she has done this.
My father likes to see it like this.
He says it is kempt.

But I know
it is because of the way
my mother’s hair falls
when he pulls the pins out.
Easily, like the curtains
when they untie them in the evening.

Reprinted from “Rose,” BOA Editions, Ltd., 1986, by permission of the publisher. Copyright (c) 1986 by Li-Young Lee, whose most recent book of poetry is “Book of My Nights,” BOA Editions, Ltd., 2001. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

When you thought “I have not written
a decent poem in years,”
you then replied,
“Then write an indecent one.”

This was no help at all,
as was neither of the remembrances
you began to watch
of the buildings
of the people jumping from

the buildings,

then stopped, because
it is a kind of pornographic impulse
to return to such a thing
as if it could fill your heart
the memory not quite vivid enough

as if love itself was too broken
to hold us together.
Can we be held together at all?
If so, a poem will not do it.
Neither pornography.

We all agree, don’t we,
that we must be bound
together by
force? Shut us in, lock the door
and don’t let us out no matter

how loud
nor how long
we scream
for you to let us you
motherfucking beast.

It’s that kind of poem you
wish you could write.
One in which you could
swear, and it would seem
more than okay.
It would seem right.

To use words.
That are supposed to be
more meaningful than they are
and have them turn out
to be just the right words
at just the right time.

You imagine
you should read
more of your junk mail
because there, words are like
cash. The sort of cash
you think you could use

on a day
with the tv off
the radio off
the computer off
just words to tell someone

“I love you.”

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 — I’d guess we’ve all had dreams like the one portrayed in this wistful poem by Tennessee poet Jeff Daniel Marion. And I’d guess that like me, you too have tried to nod off again just to capture a few more moments from the past.

Reunion

Last night in a dream
you came to me. We were young
again and you were smiling,
happy in the way a sparrow in spring
hops from branch to branch.
I took you in my arms
and swung you about, so carefree
was my youth.

What can I say?
That time wears away, draws its lines
on every feature? That we wake
to dark skies whose only answer
is rain, cold as the years
that stretch behind us, blurring
this window far from you.

Reprinted from “Lost & Found,” The Sow’s Ear Press, Abingdon, VA, 1994, by permission of the author. Poem copyright (c) 1994 by Jeff Daniel Marion, whose most recent book is “Ebbing & Flowing Springs: New and Selected Poems and Prose, 1976-2001,” Celtic Cat Publishing, 2002. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

If you are an E-Verse Radio follower and were wondering what happened to it, well, Ernie’s computer bit it (the dust, or something akin to the dust). So he’s been gone. But the new E-Verse Radio is shaping up to be a cooler than though version of the previous version of the thing that was, with a website and all the poetry you can swallow.

Also, the E-Verse Radio has a new email address, like this: ernest@baumanrarebooks.com. Send him a subscription request to get onto the poetry email list that tops them all.

E-Verse Radio declares: “Veni, vidi, vici”! It is a regular weekly column of literary, publishing, and arts information and opinion that has gone out since 1999. It is brought to you by ERNEST HILBERT and currently enjoys over 1,300 readers.

You know you want to. So do it.

A Typographic Poem from Pia (set by myself, because I found it so lovely).

Dante

Albertina Regular

Pastonchi Regular

@ piaze.com: Ehrhardt, Dante, Albertina, Pastonchi

There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, “It is just as I feared! – 
Two Owls and a Hen,
Four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard!”

 – Edward Lear
a Limerick from A Book of Nonsense

For a good definition of the limerick, see Wikipedia (as usual):

Limerick (poetry) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: A limerick is a five-line, often humorous and ribald poem with a strict meter, popularized by Edward Lear and Ogden Nash. The rhyme scheme is usually “A-A-B-B-A”, with a rather rigid meter. The first, second, and fifth lines are three metrical feet; the third and fourth two metrical feet.

Lilmerick poetry to come, hopefully, at the daily poem.