American Life in Poetry: Column 083 BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 Poems of simple pleasure, poems of quiet celebration, well, they aren't anything like those poems we were asked to wrestle with in high school, our teachers insisting that we get a headlock on THE MEANING. This one by Dale Ritterbusch of Wisconsin is more my cup of tea. Green Tea There is this tea I have sometimes, Pan Long Ying Hao, so tightly curled it looks like tiny roots gnarled, a greenish-gray. When it steeps, it opens the way you woke this morning, stretching, your hands behind your head, back arched, toes pointing, a smile steeped in ceremony, a celebration, the reaching of your arms. Reprinted from "Far From the Temple of Heaven," Black Moss Press, April 2006, by permission of the author. Copyright © 2007 by Dale Ritterbusch. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
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