American Life in Poetry: Column 076

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.“