The Sunday Poet: Wyn Cooper

Wyn Cooper

Wyn Cooper has published five books of poems, most recently Mars Poetica. His work has appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, Slate, and more than 100 other magazines, as well as in 25 anthologies of contemporary poetry. His poems have been turned into songs by Sheryl Crow, David Broza, and Madison Smartt Bell. He has taught at Bennington College, Marlboro College, the University of Utah, and at The Frost Place, and has given readings throughout the United States as well as in Europe and South America. He is a former editor of Quarterly West, and the recipient of a fellowship from the Ucross Foundation. He worked for two years at the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute, a think tank run by the Poetry Foundation, and now lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, where he works as a freelance editor.

Drummer  

A bass drum’s beat

wakes her in the night.

She goes to the window,

looks out and sees nothing,

but the pounding continues.

She hears her heart

above the noise of fans,

crickets, the refrigerator

that keeps her wine cold

as the night she met him.

He didn’t look like a drummer

or act like one, no hands

beating time on the table

in the tiny dark bar           

he took her to twice.

Time waits for no one,

he said, and she thought

Stones but didn’t say it,

just played it straight

as he sang her praises.

He never called back,

just sent a postcard

that said Still drumming.