Kooser’s Column 234 – Bennett’s Western

Posted by Linda Sue Grimes Sep 14, 2009

Kooser’s Commentary

About the poem, Kooser comments: “This week’s poem is by a high school student, Michelle Bennett, who lives in Tukwila, Washington, and here she is taking a look at what comes next, Western Washington University in Bellingham, with everything new about it, including opportunity.

The Poem

Depending upon the reader’s own experience, this poem will ring happy or sad, melancholy or uplifting:

The first four lines of the poem:

You find yourself in a narrow bed you’ve never slept in,

on a tree-lined grassy field you’ve never walked upon,

on a cold toilet seat you have not sat on,

in a place you now call your home, your learning, your future

To read the rest of this verse, Column 234 .

Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry

While serving as the U. S. Poet Laureate 2004 to 2006, Nebraska poet Ted Kooser launched his series of weekly columns called American Life in Poetry. These columns are offered free to newspapers to dramatize the value and just plain fun of poetry and to demonstrate how poetry enhances life in America.