American Life in Poetry 512

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American Life in Poetry: Column 512

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

 

I’ve read lots of poems about the loss of beloved pets, but this one by J.T. Ledbetter, who lives in California, is an especially fine and sensitive one. Elegy for Blue  Someone must have seen an old dog dragging its broken body through the wet grass; someone should have known it was lost, drinking from the old well, then lifting its head to the wind off the bottoms, and someone might have wanted that dog trailing its legs along the ground like vines sliding up the creek searching for sun; but they were not there when the dog wandered through Turley’s Woods looking for food and stopped beneath the thorn trees and wrapped its tail around its nose until it was covered by falling leaves that piled up and up until there was no lost dog at all to hear the distant voice calling through the timber, only a tired heart breathing slower, and breath, soft as mist, above the leaves. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2012 by J. T. Ledbetter, from his most recent book of poems, Old and Lost Rivers, Lost Horse Press, 2012. Poem reprinted by permission of J. T. Ledbetter and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2014 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.