Introduction by Ted Kooser: Descriptive poetry depends for its effects in part upon the
vividness of details. Here the Virginia poet, Claudia Emerson, describes the
type of old building all of us have seen but may not have stopped to look at
carefully. And thoughtfully.
Stable
One rusty horseshoe hangs on a nail
above the door, still losing its luck,
and a work-collar swings, an empty
old noose. The silence waits, wild to be
broken by hoofbeat and heavy
harness slap, will founder but remain;
while, outside, above the stable,
eight, nine, now ten buzzards swing low
in lazy loops, a loose black warp
of patience, bearing the blank sky
like a pall of wind on mourning
wings. But the bones of this place are
long picked clean. Only the hayrake's
ribs still rise from the rampant grasses.
Poem copyright © 1997 by Claudia Emerson Andrews, a 2005
Witter Bynner Fellow of the Library of Congress. Reprinted from “Pharoah,
Pharoah,” (1997) by permission of the author, whose newest book, “Late Wife,”
will appear this fall; both collections are published by Louisiana State
University’s Southern Messenger Poets. This weekly column is supported by The
Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress and the Department of English at the
University of Nebraska, Lincoln. The column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
