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Column 609

Lily

Intro by Ted Kooser
11.20.2016

We’ve been select­ing poems for this col­umn for more than ten years and I can’t remem­ber ever pub­lish­ing a poem about a cat. But here at last is a cat, a love­ly old cat. Ron Koertge lives in Cal­i­for­nia, and his most recent book of poems is Vam­pire Plan­et: New & Select­ed Poems, from Red Hen Press. 

Lily

No one would take her when Ruth passed.
As the survivors assessed some antiques,
I kept hearing, "She's old. Somebody
should put her down."

I picked her up instead. Every night I tell her
about the fish who died for her, the ones
in the cheerful aluminum cans.

She lies on my chest to sleep, rising
and falling, rising and falling like a rowboat
fastened to a battered dock by a string.

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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 ©2016 by Ron Koertge, “Lily,” from Vampire Planet: New & Selected Poems, (Red Hen Press, 2016). Poem reprinted by permission of Ron Koertge and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.