Monday, 30 September 2024

American Life in Poetry: Night Watch

Image
Ted Kooser, US Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006. Photo by UNL Publications and Photography.

 



I have three dogs and they are always insisting on one thing or another. Having a dog is like having a dictator. In this poem by Mark Smith-Soto, who teaches in North Carolina, his dog Chico is very much like my dogs, demanding human company on whatever mission they choose to pursue.

 


Night Watch


Chico whines, no reason why. Just now walked,

dinner gobbled, head and ears well scratched.

And yet he whines, looking up at me as if confused

at my just sitting here, typing away, while darkness

is stalking the back yard. How can I be so blind,

he wants to know, how sad, how tragic, how I

won’t listen before it is too late. His whines are

refugees from a brain where time and loss have

small dominion, but where the tyranny of now

is absolute. I get up and throw open the kitchen door,

and he disappears down the cement steps, barking

deeper and darker than I remember. I follow

to find him perfectly still in the empty yard —

the two of us in the twilight, standing guard.


Ted Kooser was US Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006. He is a professor in the English Department of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He lives on an acreage near the village of Garland, Nebraska, with his wife Kathleen Rutledge, the editor of the Lincoln Journal Star.


American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org),

publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of

Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Donal Heffernan, whose most recent book of poetry is

Duets of Motion,” Lone Oak Press, 2001. Poem reprinted by permission of Donal Heffernan.

Introduction copyright ©2010 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.


American Life in Poetry ©2006 The Poetry Foundation

Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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