An Epiphany

By Ted Kooser b. 1939 Ted Kooser

I have seen the Brown Recluse Spider

run with a net in her hand, or rather,

what resembled a net, what resembled

a hand. She ran down the gleaming white floor

of the bathtub, trailing a frail swirl

of hair, and in it the hull of a beetle

lay woven. The hair was my wife’s,

long and dark, a few loose strands, a curl

she might idly have turned on a finger,

she might idly have twisted, speaking to me,

and the legs of the beetle were broken.

Ted Kooser, “An Epiphany” 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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