Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Tuesday, July 25, 2023.

Today's poem is by Ted Cooser, a favorite poet of ours.

And the poem is in the basement of the Goodwill store. I'll read it once, offer a few

comments, and then read it one more time.

In musty light, in the thin brown air of damp carpet, doll heads and rust. Beneath long rows of sharp footfalls like nails in a lid, an old man stands trying on glasses, lifting each pair from the box like a glittering fish and holding it up to the light of a dirty bulb. Near him, a heap of enameled pans as white as skulls looms in

the catacomb shadows and old toilets with dry red throats, cough-up bouquets of curtain rods.

You've seen him somewhere before. He's wearing the green leisure suit you threw out with the

garbage and the Christmas

tie you hated, and the ventilated wing-tip shoes you found in your father's closet and

wore as a joke.

And the glasses which finally fit him, through which he looks to see you looking back,

two mirrors which flash and glance, are those through which one day

you too will look down over the years

when you have grown old and thin

and no longer particular

and the things you once thought

you were rid of forever

have taken you back in their arms

you. Ted Cooser

is the 13th

Poet Laureate of the United States

...