By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel

Last night, Ted Kooser read his poetry at the Plaza Library and gave the audience textured snapshots of people and places in his Midwest world of Nebraska, Iowa, and Kansas. His poems often tell stories that bring those long gone, back to life in the light for a shining moment.

This is a good season for Ted Kooser’s poetry. The weather is cooling and somehow his poetry needs to be outdoors, under a tree, along a dusty road, or just in your garden with the birds your soundtrack. Rather than ramble, here, I’ll let Ted do that better with a poem he read for us…this one is about his Dad:

Father

Today you would be ninety-seven
if you had lived, and we would all be
miserable, you and your children,
driving from clinic to clinic,
an ancient fearful hypochondriac
and his fretful son and daughter,
asking directions, trying to read
the complicated, fading map of cures.
But with your dignity intact
you have been gone for twenty years,
and I am glad for all of us, although
I miss you every day—the heartbeat
under your necktie, the hand cupped
on the back of my neck, Old Spice
in the air, your voice delighted with stories.
On this day each year you loved to relate
that the moment of your birth
your mother glanced out the window
and saw lilacs in bloom. Well, today
lilacs are blooming in side yards
all over Iowa, still welcoming you.

...from Delights & Shadows, Copper Canyon Press, Port Townsend, WA 2004