November 22

Sunny and cool, thin clouds.

In his drab gray overcoat

unbuttoned and flying out behind,

a stocky, bullet-headed owl

with dirty claws and thick wrists

slowly flaps home

from working the night shift.

He is so tired he has forgotten

his lunchbox, his pay stub.

He will not be able to sleep 

in his empty apartment

what with the neighboring blackbirds

flying into his face,

but will stay awake all morning,

round-shouldered and glassy-eyed,

composing a poem about

paradise, perfectly woven

of mouse bones and moist pieces of fur. 

From Winter Morning Walks, by Ted Kooser

Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2000

  Used by permission of the author

Ted Kooser wrote his way out of the fog of cancer, with all of its density-- by walking each morning at dawn, or before. He addressed his "postcards" to his good friend Jim Harrison. Often writing our way out of an emotional funk is as good a mental practice as it is an exercise for writers. I know Ted and his poems have taught me a great deal about living and surviving life.