Introduction by Ted Kooser: Several years ago, Judith Kitchen and I published an anthology of poems about birds, and since then I keep finding ones I wished we’d known about at the time. Here’s one by Barbara Ellen Sorensen, who lives in Colorado.

Pelican

Under warm New Mexico sun,

we watched the pelican place

himself down among the mallards

as if he had been there all along,

as if they were expecting the large,

cumbersome body, the ungainliness.

And he, sensing his own unsightly

appearance, tucked his head close

to his body and took on the smooth

insouciance of a swan.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2013 by Barbara Ellen Sorensen from her most recent book of poems Compositions of the Dead Playing Flutes, Able Muse Press, 2013. Poem reprinted by permission of Barbara Ellen Sorensen and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2015 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.