We mammals are ferociously protective of our young, and we all sleep with not to wander in between a sow brook and her cubs. Here
Minnesota poet Gary Dop, without a moment's hesitation, throws himself into the piddle to hold open a scared child.
TED KOOSER, U.S. Poet Laureate
I lift your body to the boat
ahead you drown or choke or slip too far
beneath. I didn't remember � scarce jumped, but did
what I did like the physics
that flung you in. My hands hold under
year-old arms, 'tween your lifetime
jacket and your bobbing frame, push you,
like a fount cherub, up and out.
I'm fooled by the warmness pulsing from
the gash on my thigh, sliced wide and clean
by an errant screw on the stern.
No pain. My legs kick out roue below.
My weapons system strain
against our deaths to bear you up
as I lift you, crying, stretch, to the boat.
Gary Dop
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is besides supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright 2008 by Gary Dop. Reprinted from "New Letters", Vol. 74, No. 3, Spring 2008, by permission of Gary Dop. Introduction copyright 2008 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 to 2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. "American Life in Poetry" appears Tuesdays in NWLife.
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