The Hunter´s Morning
(aka “Greenridge”)
I gaze across a wooded glen
with grasses high of meadows past,
The river glides soft at my back
awaiting all upon a chance.
I hear the trout jump now and then
to fill their bellies with a feast,
While eagle sentries high above
watch for motion low beneath.
We all await our hopeful prey
patiently now this quiet day,
As sun comes up and warms within
our chilly bones from sitting still.
A knocking sound upon the wood
perhaps a rack against a tree,
My senses spring to the alert
a squirrel setting acorns free.
A glint of “blaze” far off afield
the orange grows as it draws near,
Driving the prey one hopes is nigh
a hunter son does soon appear.
The elk, the moose, the bear and deer
they all have once or twice passed here,
But of today it will not be
it’s just the eagle, fish and me.
— Joe Penta
This poem was written in October
based on a hunting trip to Grand Lake
with his sons.
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American Life in Poetry: Column 527
edited by Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate
Seventy years ago, when I entered
Beardshear Elementary in Ames, Iowa,
the school employed a custodian, Mr.
Shockley, who had for an office a closet
under the stairs. I wish I could thank
him for mopping up all our vomit and
helping us buckle our galoshes. Here’s a
fine poem about custodians by David
Livewell, from New Jersey, whose most
recent book of poems is Shackamaxon
(Truman State Univ. Press, 2012).
Custodians
Retired from other trades, they wore
Work clothes again to mop the johns
And feed the furnace loads of coal.
Their roughened faces matched the
bronze
Of the school bell the nun would swing
To start the day. They limped but
smiled,
Explored the secret, oldest nooks:
The steeple’s clock, dark attics piled
With inkwell desks, the caves beneath
The stage on Bingo night. The pastor
Bowed to the powers in their hands:
Fuses and fire alarms, the plaster
Smoothing a flaking wall, the keys
To countless locks. They fixed the lights
In the crawl space above the nave
And tolled the bells for funeral rites.
Maintain what dead men made. Time
blurs
Their scripted names and well-waxed
floors,
Those keepers winking through the
years
And whistling down the corridors.
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
©2014 by David Livewell, “Custodians,”
from Southwest Review (Vol. 99, no. 2,
2014). Poem reprinted by permission of
David Livewell and Southwest Review.
Introduction copyright © 2015 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.
