Welcome back to The Daily Poem. I'm David Kern, and today is Tuesday, May 11th, 2021. As Heidi mentioned on

yesterday's episode, Sunday was Mother Today. So I wanted to share with you a Mother's Day poem that I love.

It's by an American poet who, well, you've heard from several times in this podcast. His name is Ted Coozer, an American poet who was born in

April of 1939, so he just had his birthday. He won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 2005 and

served as the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004 to 2006.

He's from Nebraska and is known as a Great Plains poet.

I'm quite fond of his work,

and so it made sense to share this poem with you.

This is how it goes.

Mid-April already,

the wild plums bloom at the roadside,

a lacy white against the exuberant, jubilant green of new grass "'and the dusty fading black of burned-out ditches.

"'No leaves, not yet, only the delicate star-pedaled blossoms

"'sweet with their timeless perfume.

You've been gone a month today and have missed three rains and one night-long watch for tornadoes.

I sat in the cellar from six to eight while fat spring clouds went somersaulting, rumbling east.

Then it poured, a storm that walked on legs of lightning, dragging its shaggy belly over the fields.

The meadow larks are back, and the finches are turning from green to gold.

Those same two geese have come to the pond again this year,

honking in over the trees and splashing down.

They never nest, but stay a week or two, then leave.

The peonies are up, the red sprouts burning in circles like birthday candles,

...