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Column 295

Girl Riding a Horse in a Field of Sunflowers

Intro by Ted Kooser
11.14.2010

The first poem we pub­lished in this col­umn, back in the spring of 2005, was by David Allan Evans, the Poet Lau­re­ate of South Dako­ta, and it’s good to pub­lish anoth­er one today, hav­ing recent­ly had our five-year anniversary.

Girl Riding a Horse in a Field of Sunflowers

Sitting perfectly upright,
contented and pensive,
she holds in one hand,
loosely, the reins of summer:

the green of trees and bushes;
the blue of lake water;
the red of her jacket
and open collar; the brown
of her pinned-up hair,
and her horse, deep
in the yellow of sunflowers.

When she stops to rest,
summer rests.
When she decides to leave,
there goes summer
over the hill.

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Disclaimer

We do not accept unsolicited submissions

We do not accept unsolicited submissions. 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 ©2009 by David Allan Evans from his most recent book of poems, This Water. These Rocks. San Francisco Bay Press, 2009. Reprinted by permission of David Allan Evans and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.