After reading Ted Kooser's new collection of poems, Red Stilts, which he had sent to me, I kept thinking about this writer, now in his eighties, strolling his Nebraska town with eyes and ears attentive to every stirring of life. So I wrote this little story to send him as a gift in return for his book:

THE POET TAKES A WALK

Of course, he is not only a poet. He is also a husband, father, son, citizen, and a whole cast of other characters, all inhabiting the same skin, like a crowd of joeys jostling inside the pouch of a mother kangaroo. The character rivaling the poet for the lead role this morning is the handyman, for he is on his way to the hardware store in search of a spring to replace one that broke the day before on the latch to the garden gate. Ordinarily, he would be at his desk this time in the morning, pen in one hand, chin resting in the other, his mind pulling images out of the air and tethering them to the page with words.

But his wife was awakened time and again in the night by the banging of the garden gate, which fidgeted in high winds blowing across the plains. Hard of hearing, the poet slept through the ruckus, learning of it from his wife over breakfast. “Do you think you might fix it?” she asked, her eyes hollow from loss of sleep. Of course he could fix it. If not a farmer himself, hadn’t he grown up in farm country, gone to school with 4-H champions, studied the tools heaped in the backs of pickup trucks parked on Main Street? He promised his wife he would quiet the gate before dark.

So the man approaching the hardware store this morning is as much husband as handyman, determined to mend a bit of the world for his beloved. He will seek out the elderly clerk, a man of roughly his own age, hold out the broken part in his palm, and say, “I’ve come in search of a spring.” Forming that sentence, with its two iambs followed by an anapest, the poet envisions water welling up to fill a stony pool in a pasture. From all directions, tracks worn into the ground by thirsty cows converge on the water, as workers from the chicken plant converge on Wayne’s tavern at quitting time. Or as creases gather at the corner of an eye accustomed to squinting in the harsh prairie sunlight. Or as fabric purses at the mouth of a draw-string bag.

The poet is chasing other metaphors when he hears the raspy voice of the elderly clerk asking, “What can I do for you?” Recalling his errand, the handyman shoulders aside the poet and holds out his hand to display the broken spring. “Need one of those, eh?” says the clerk, before the poet can utter the sentence he has prepared. They walk to the back of the store past shelves crowded with tools, parts, cans of paint, lawn and garden gear, and gizmos whose uses the poet can only guess. The clerk stops before a bank of small wooden drawers stained dark from oily and sweaty hands, slides one drawer out, stirs the contents with a blunt finger, then pulls out a spring. “Bingo,” he says.

Bingo, the poet thinks, heading home. Church basements. The players expectant as each number is called out, hoping as gamblers do with every turn of the wheel, every roll of the dice. Hope springs eternal. The spring of the year. A spring in my walk. Spring a surprise. Nothing springs to mind. Everything springs to mind. Leapers, dancers, arches, mouse traps, curly hair...

“Wherever are you going?” The sound of his wife’s voice calling to him awakens the husband, who discovers that he and the handyman, father, son, citizen, and the whole cast of characters have wandered past the house and halfway up the block. Bundled inside their shared skin, and giving the appearance of a single person instead of a crowd, they turn around, reach the garden gate and, by dint of much finagling, repair the latch well before dark. The poet’s wife goes to bed early, hoping to catch up on sleep, but the poet sits at his desk past midnight, every now and again writing a line that wells up in his mind like water from a pasture spring.