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Just returned from a brief trip to visit Celia and Gary on the Saltmarsh. While waiting for Celia’s homemade bean soup to simmer, savoring Gary’s smoked salmon caught earlier this month just off their land in the Hood Canal, talk turned to Ted Kooser, this year’s Poet Laureate of the United States. Celia showed me a photocopy of a short interview from the New York Times Magazine.

Jean and I loved his book of essays Local Wonders, which we read over the months following our last visit with Gary and Celia, but I haven’t read any of his poetry. Celia loaned us two of his books of poetry. I started reading Winter Morning Walks out loud to Jean the night I returned. Already I love it. So quiet. So in-tune with the land, the seasons, and the humanity around him. Here’s the opening poem:

The quarry road tumbles toward me
out of the early morning darkness,
lustrous with frost, an unrolled bolt
of softly glowing fabric, interwoven
with tiny glass beads on silver thread,
the cloth spilled out and then lovingly
smoothed by my father’s hand
as he stands behind his wooden counter
(dark as these fields) at Tilden’s Store
so many years ago. “Here,” he says smiling,
“you can make somoething special with this.”