I place this within the first order
of wonders: a ten-year-old girl
alone on a sunny, glassed-in porch
in February, the world beyond
the windows slowly tipping forward
into spring, her thin arms held out
in the sleepwalker pose, and pinched
and stretched between her fingers,
a length of common grocery twine
upon which smoothly spins and leans
one of the smaller worlds we each
at one time learn to master, the last
to balance so lightly in our hands.
----
Ted Kooser, American Poet Laureate (2004-2006).
This poem appeared in his collection "Delights
and Shawdows," for which he won the Pulitzer
Prize for poetry in 2005.
