Ted+Kooser

=**Ted Kooser** = **By: Sadie Goetze**

Ted Kooser was born in Ames, Iowa in 1939. Ted is the auther of 12 collections of poetry. He lives in Garland, Nebraska with his wife Kathleen Rutledge. Ted spends time learning about the Great Plains. He also spent time working for an insurance industry as an executive. He has won two NEA Literary Fellowships in 1976 and 1984, the Pushcart Prize, the Nebraska Book Awards for Poetry in 2001 and Nonfiction in 2004, the Stanley Kunitz Prize in 1984, the James Boatwright Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2005. Visit the Ted Kooser website http://bit.ly/gOYTDg !

Here are some poems by Ted Kooser: **Flying at Night**

 Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.  Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies  like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,  some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,  snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn  back into the little system of his care.  All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,  tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.

**Father**

 Today you would be ninety-seven <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> if you had lived, and we would all be <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> miserable, you and your children, <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> driving from clinic to clinic, <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> an ancient fearful hypochondriac <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> and his fretful son and daughter, <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> asking directions, trying to read <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> the complicated, fading map of cures. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> But with your dignity intact <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> you have been gone for twenty years, <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> and I am glad for all of us, although <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> I miss you every day—the heartbeat <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> under your necktie, the hand cupped <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> on the back of my neck, Old Spice <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> in the air, your voice delighted with stories. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> On this day each year you loved to relate <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> that the moment of your birth <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> your mother glanced out the window <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> and saw lilacs in bloom. Well, today <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> lilacs are blooming in side yards <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> all over Iowa, still welcoming you.