Welcome back to the Daily Poem. I'm David Kern here at Goldberry Books in Concord, North Carolina,

and today is Thursday, April 28, 2022. Today's poem is by another favorite of mine, Ted Cooser.

He's an American poet who won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2005, and was also a Poet Laureate

consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004 to 2006.

His birthday is April 25th. He was born in 1939. So his birthday was just a few days ago.

So again, although I have shared poems by him on this podcast before, I never tire of doing so

and to seem like the perfect week to share another.

The one that I'm going to share today is called Daddy Long Legs, and it comes from a collection called Flying at Night, Poems 1965 to 1985,

which was published in 2005.

This is how it goes.

Daddy Long Legs by Ted Couser.

Here on Fine Long Legs by Ted Couser. Here on fine long legs, springy as steel, a life rides, sealed in a small brown pill that skims along

over the basement floor, wrapped up in a simple obsession. Eight legs reach out like the master ribs of a web

in which some thought is caught dead center in its own small world,

a thought so far from the touch of things that we can only guess at it.

If mine, it would be the secret dream of walking alone across the floor of my life with

an easy grace and with love enough to live on at the center of myself.

The Cooser has been described as a poet with a conversational tone. I suppose that's true.

I'm sure I've mentioned that before on this podcast.

But I think that contemplative is actually a better word.

Because although, yes, it is a bit conversational in language,

which I think sometimes just means it doesn't have the trimmings of a great deal of form. I think that's what

...