30 Quotes by Ted Kooser

a storm that walked on legs of lightning,dragging its shaggy belly over the fields.

The past few weeks, I've been seeing coyote hunters during the day with their jeeps and pickups parked by the road, talking into walkie-talkies, dead-serious looks on their faces. In their camouflage clothes, they look like members of a SWAT team about to break into a methamphetamine lab. They must imagine that there's some danger. Are the coyotes armed and dangerous?

Mother (fragment)...You asked me if I would be sad when it happenedand I am sad. But the iris I moved from your housenow hold in the dusty dry fists of their rootsgreen knives and forks as if waiting for dinner,as if spring were a feast. I thank you for that.Were it not for the way you taught me to lookat the world, to see the life at play in everything, I would have to be lonely forever.

His hands fluttered like birds,each with a fancy silk ribbonto weave into their nest,as he stood at the mirrordressing for work, waving helloto himself with both hands.

A poem is a record of a discovery.

If I don’t take the risk, I’ll wind up with a bloodless poem. I have to be out there on the edge.

This evening, I sat by an open window and read till the light was gone and the book was no more than a part of the darkness...

The poem is the device through which the ordinary world is seen in a new way – engaging, compelling, even beautiful.

Keeping a journal is like taking good care of one’s heart.