Lantern

• In the predawn cold and darkness,
• it was only a pinch of light,
• not more than a cup of warmth,
• as a farmer carried it over the snow
• to the barn where his dozen cows
• stood stomping, heavy with milk
• in the milky cloud of their lowing.
• But that was many years ago,
• and his lantern has rusted,
• its last fumes lost on the seasons
• like the breath of those cows.
• But at the last he thought to leave
• a fresh ribbon of wick coiled up
• in the chimney in case it was ever
• needed again, a dollar’s worth
• of preparation. And, getting prepared
• for a late winter, a pregnant mouse
• was able to squeeze through a vent
• and unravel that wick and make
• a cottony nest with dusty,
• panoramic windows, and there to raise
• her bald and mewling, pissy brood,
• and then for them to disappear,
• the way we all, one day, move on,
• leaving a little sharp whiff
• of ourselves in the dirty bedding. 

Ted Kooser, who was born in Ames, Iowa, in 1939, was Poet Laureate of the United States from 2004 to 2006. In 2005, a year after his appointment as Poet Laureate, Kooser was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Dana Gioia has characterized Kooser as a writer “who has written more perfect poems than any poet of his generation.” A master of the brief, imagistic lyric and a poet of quiet precision and gracious humanity, Kooser is one of America’s most accomplished poets. He lives near Garland, Nebraska, with his wife Kathleen Rutledge, former editor of the Lincoln Journal Star. “Lantern” is from Kooser’s most recent collection, Splitting an Order, published by Copper Canyon Press, and is reprinted here by permission.