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| Photo courtesy Tori Campbell |
Introduction by Ted Kooser: How’s this poem for its
ability to collapse all the years from childhood to middle age in a matter of
fifteen short lines? George Bilgere is one of this column’s favorite poets. He
lives and teaches in Ohio.
The Wading Pool
The toddlers in their tadpole bodies,
with their squirt guns and snorkels,
their beautiful mommies and inflatable whales,
are still too young to understand that this is as good as it
gets.
Soon they must leave the wading pool
and stand all day at the concession stand
with their hormones and snow cones,
their soul patches and tribal tattoos,
pretending not to notice how beautiful they are,
until they simply can’t stand it
and before you know it
they’re lined up on lawn chairs,
dozing in the noonday sun
with their stretch marks and beer bellies,
their Wall Street Journals and SPF 50.
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 ©2014 by George Bilgere from his most recent book of poems,
Imperial, Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 2014. Poem reprinted by permission of
George Bilgere 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.
