Welcome back to the Daily Poem here on the Closer Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern, and today is Wednesday, May 6, 2020.

Today's poem is by Theodore J. Cooser, also known as Ted Cooser, a favorite of mine. He served as poet laureate consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004 to 2006.

And he's still living, actually.

He was born in 1939.

And as I said, he's one of my favorites.

So I regularly turn to him.

I haven't read one of his poems on this podcast since sometime last year, I think, in November.

So I wanted to read one of my favorites to you.

This is a pretty melancholy poem.

So I apologize for that in advance,

but it's called Abandoned Farmhouse. He was a big man, says the size of his shoes on a pile of

broken dishes by the house. A tall man, too, says the length of the bed in an upstairs room.

And a good, god-fearing man, says the Bible with a broken back on the floor below the window,

dusty with sun. But not a man for farming, say the fields cluttered with boulders and the leaky barn.

A woman lived with him, says the bedroom wall, papered with lilacs in the kitchen shelves

covered with oil cloth, and they had a child, says the sandbox made from a tractor tire.

Money was scarce, say the jars of plum preserves and canned tomatoes sealed in the cellar hole.

And the winter's cold, say the rags in the window frames.

It was lonely here, says the narrow country road.

Something went wrong, says the empty house in the weed-choked yard.

Stones in the field say he was not a farmer.

The still sealed jars in the cellar say she left in a nervous haste.

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