A Blind Woman

By Ted Kooser b. 1939 Ted Kooser

She had turned her face up into

a rain of light, and came on smiling.

The light trickled down her forehead

and into her eyes. It ran down

into the neck of her sweatshirt

and wet the white tops of her breasts.

Her brown shoes splashed on

into the light. The moment was like

a circus wagon rolling before her

through puddles of light, a cage on wheels,

and she walked fast behind it,

exuberant, curious, pushing her cane

through the bars, poking and prodding,

while the world cowered back in a corner.

Ted Kooser, “A Blind Woman” from Weather Central. Copyright © 1994 by Ted Kooser. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, www.upress.pitt.edu. Used by permission of University of Pittsburgh Press.

Source: Weather Central (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994)

Biography

Poet and essayist Ted Kooser is known for his honest, accessible verse that celebrates the quotidian and captures a vanishing way of life. Brad Leithauser wrote in the New York Times Book Review that, “Whether or not he originally set out to…[Kooser’s] become, perforce, an elegist.” Populated by farmers, family ancestors, and heirlooms, Kooser’s poems reflect his abiding interest in the past, but escape nostalgia in part because . . .

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