Poetry: North of Alliance

Here is there third of five poems from Flying at Night by Ted Kooser, Poet Laureate of the United States, that moved me for some reason. Besides being able to share them with you, my BLOG allows me to put these poems in a safe place so I can look at them again. Let me know what you think.

North of Alliance

This is an empty house; not a stick

of furniture left, not even

a newspaper sodden with rain

under a broken window; nothing

to tell us the style of the people

who lived here, but that

they took it along. But wait:

here, penciled in inches up a doorframe, these little marks,

mark the growth of a child

impatient to get on with it,

a child stretching his neck

in a hurry to leave nothing here

but an absence grown tall in a doorway.