The Red Letters
In ancient Rome, feast days were indicated on the calendar by red letters.
To my mind, all poetry and art serves as a reminder that every day we wake together beneath the sun is a red-letter day.
WRENS
to the who I will be next, two busy little wrens
have occupied a swallow’s nest, adding their own
belongings to its hard mud cup: discarded feathers,
snippets of grass, a piece of twine unraveling,
and just now they’re defending it against a catbird
twice their size, who struts along a stone wall
near to them, too near to them, and each wren
takes a turn at flying at him, crying in its tiny
voice, then flies back, and the other takes a turn
at the shuttle, weaving with her needle beak
a thin green fabric on the early summer air
upon which one can see what will be left when
all of us have flown: a Japanese lilac bush,
its flowers turning brown already, the wall
with a few bird droppings, and the common cup
of life that fills each morning, then spills over.
––Ted Kooser
The 26 poems of Fellow Creatures, written across many years––and published for the first time in this collection––are a kind of record of his observations and engagement with the natural world around his farm in rural Nebraska. The poems are, by turns, wry, surprising, frightening, provocative, and almost always tender. “Wrens” appears early in the collection and demonstrates how a sharp eye and open heart are capable of engaging us in the small but precious moments of existence. These wrens, nesting above his doorway, are industrious creatures as well; not only do we find them hard at work, constructing a safe space for potential offspring, but they also have to take turns fending off predators who would dine on those delicate eggs if given the chance. No wonder Ted admires their determination. But I love the subtle ways the poet has enlarged this small narrative so that it ends up implicating far more than one avian couple. “Over a door,” he begins, “through which I pass from who I am/ to the who I will be next…”––and we can’t help but consider all the doorways into and out of our days (and existence itself,) and what we come to understand through that effort. No matter the form or materials employed, we each attempt to weave “a thin green fabric” that may make the difference between new life and bitter surrender.
As the poem winds down, it points to that sense of culmination we each work toward––even if we struggle to articulate its importance: “one can see what will be left when/ all of us have flown: a Japanese lilac bush,/ its flowers turning brown already, the wall/ with a few bird droppings, and”––and here’s where we feel something new begin to stir in our own thatched hearts–– “…the common cup/ of life that fills each morning, then spills over.” Filling, spilling, filling again; it’s the hard work and sweet reward of being flesh and blood on this small blue-green habitable planet.
If you’ll permit me to don my salesman’s hat for a moment, I’d like to suggest that there might be some of your own flock for whom these poems would prove a much-appreciated present. Poetry is a reminder of why all that hard work is more than mere responsibility; it is the gift itself. We work with the tools and the materials we have for as much time as we’re given––and gratitude guides us better than regret. "When you arise in the morning,” wrote Marcus Aurelius, “think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive—to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love." Amen. So I’ll paste below the information on how you might acquire your own copy of Fellow Creatures––for pleasure’s sake, and to further the work of the Red Letters.
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