Welcome back to the Daily Poem. I'm David Kern, and today is Wednesday, September 16th, 2020.

Today's poem is by an American poet and literary critic named Arthur Ivor Winters.

He goes by Ivor Winters, and he was born in October of 1900 and died in January of 1968.

He's one of those poets who probably should be remembered a lot more than he is.

He's forgotten far more than his talent deserves.

But he was the teacher of poets like Tom Gunn, Donald Hall, Philip Levine, Robert Pinsky, Robert Hass, and others,

and was also a mentor to the likes of Donald Justice.

He won the 1961 Bollingen Prize for Poetry for his book, Collected Poems.

The poem that I'm going to read today is called At the San Francisco Airport.

It opens with a dedication that reads,

To My Daughter, 1954.

It goes like this.

This is the terminal.

The light gives perfect vision, false and hard.

The metal glitter is deep and bright.

Great planes are waiting in the yard.

They are already in the night.

You were here beside me, small, contained and fragile and intent on things that I would

half recall.

Yet going whether you are bent.

I am the past and that is all. But you and I in part are one. The frightened brain,

the nervous will, the knowledge of what must be done, the passion to acquire the skill to face

...