Old Woman in a Housecoat by Georgiana Cohen : American Life in Poetry

The Poetry Foundation

Library of Congress

University of Nebraska
at Lincoln

American Life in Poetry: Column 14

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Often everyday experiences provide poets with inspiration. Here Georgiana Cohen observes a woman looking out her window and compares the woman to the sunset. The woman's "slumped" chin, the fence that separates them, and the "beached" cars set the poem's tone; this is clearly not a celebration of the neighborhood. Yet by turning to clouds, sky, and breath, Cohen underscores the scene's fragile grace.

Old Woman in a Housecoat

An old woman in

a floor-length housecoat

had become sunset

to me, west-facing.

Turquoise, sage, or rose,

she leans out of her

second floor window,

chin slumped in her palm,

and gazes at the

fenced property line

between us, the cars

beached in the driveway,

the creeping slide of

light across shingles.

When the window shuts,

dusk becomes blush and

bruises, projected

on vinyl siding.

Housecoats breathe across

the sky like frail clouds.

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. Reprinted from Cream City Review, 2004, by permission of the author, a writer and journalist living in Boston. Poem copyright © 2004 by Georgiana Cohen. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

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