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Column 432

Old Men Pitching Horseshoes

Intro by Ted Kooser
06.30.2013

One of the most dis­tinc­tive sounds in small-town Amer­i­ca is the chim­ing of horse­shoe pitch­ing. A friend always car­ries a pair in the trunk of his car. He’ll stop at a park in some lit­tle town and start pitch­ing, and soon, he says, oth­ers will hear that ring­ing and sud­den­ly appear as if out of thin air. In this poem, X.J. Kennedy cap­tures the fel­low­ship of horse­shoe pitchers.

Old Men Pitching Horseshoes

Back in a yard where ringers groove a ditch,
These four in shirtsleeves congregate to pitch
Dirt-burnished iron. With appraising eye,
One sizes up a peg, hoists and lets fly—
A clang resounds as though a smith had struck
Fire from a forge. His first blow, out of luck,
Rattles in circles. Hitching up his face,
He swings, and weight once more inhabits space,
Tumbles as gently as a new-laid egg.
Extended iron arms surround their peg
Like one come home to greet a long-lost brother.
Shouts from one outpost. Mutters from the other.

Now changing sides, each withered pitcher moves
As his considered dignity behooves
Down the worn path of earth where August flies
And sheaves of air in warm distortions rise,
To stand ground, fling, kick dust with all the force
Of shoes still hammered to a living horse.
 

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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 ©2007 by X.J. Kennedy. Poem reprinted from In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus: New and Selected Poems, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007, by permission of X.J. Kennedy and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.