Newsletter sign up

Be the first to know when new American Life in Poetry columns are live.

Column 656

Lifting My Daughter

Intro by Ted Kooser
10.15.2017

Joseph Hutchi­son has been writ­ing good poems for more than forty years, and I have been read­ing them for just that long. He lives in Col­orado, where he is the state Poet Lau­re­ate, and his lat­est book, The World As Is: New & Select­ed Poems, has just come out from New York Quar­ter­ly Books. Here’s a father’s poem from that fine collection.

Lifting My Daughter

As I leave for work she holds out her arms, and I
bend to lift her . . . always heavier than I remember,
because in my mind she is still that seedling bough
I used to cradle in one elbow. Her hug is honest,
fierce, forgiving. I think of Oregon's coastal pines,
wind-bent even on quiet days; they've grown in ways
the Pacific breeze has blown them all their lives.
And how will my daughter grow? Last night, I dreamed
of a mid-ocean gale, a howl among writhing waterspouts;
I don't know what it meant, or if it's still distant,
or already here. I know only how I hug my daughter,
my arms grown taut with the thought of that wind.

Share this column

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 ©2016 by Joseph Hutchison, “Lifting My Daughter,” from The World As Is: New & Selected Poems, 1972-2015, (New York Quarterly Press, 2016). Poem reprinted by permission of Joseph Hutchison and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.