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Column 695

My Cousin, Milton

Intro by Ted Kooser
07.15.2018

In one of my recent columns I wrote about the impor­tance to the over­all effect of a poem of hav­ing a strong end­ing, and here’s a fine exam­ple of that. It’s by Ter­ri Kir­by Erick­son, a North Car­olin­ian, from her book, Becom­ing the Blue Heron, pub­lished by Press 53. Oth­ers of Erick­son’s poems are avail­able in the colum­n’s archives at www​.amer​i​can​lifein​po​et​ry​.org.

My Cousin, Milton

My cousin, Milton, worked for a cable company.
The boy I knew when we were children
 
had fists that were often clenched, his face set like
an old man whose life had been so hard,
 
it hardened him. But the man's hands opened to let
more of the world in. He sent the funniest
 
cards to family and friends at Christmas, laid down
cable so others could connect. Yet, he lived
 
alone, kept to himself much of the time, so when
his sister found his body, he'd been gone
 
a good while. He died young at fifty-seven, without
fuss or bother. No sitting by the bedside
 
or feeding him soup. He just laid himself down like
a trunk line and let the signal pass through.
 

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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 ©2017 by Terri Kirby Erickson from Becoming the Blue Heron, (Press 53, 2017). Poem reprinted by permission of Terri Kirby Erickson and the publisher.   Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.