Ted Kooser is a two-time US Poet Laureate and the author of numerous poetry collections, including Delights & Shadows, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; Splitting an Order; Kindest Regards; and Cotton Candy (2022). As Poet Laureate he created “American Life in Poetry,” a free weekly column for newspapers, featuring a poem by a contemporary American writer. Born in Ames, Iowa, Kooser is a former vice president of Lincoln Benefit Life, where he worked as an insurance representative for many years. He is Presidential Professor Emeritus at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

Photograph by Matt Valentine.

Gyroscope

by Ted Kooser

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,

People on couch
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