Disarmed by Wendy Videlock : American Life in Poetry

The Poetry Foundation

Library of Congress

University of Nebraska
at Lincoln

American Life in Poetry: Column 372

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

We’ve published a number of engaging poems about parenthood in this column, and we keep finding more. Here’s Wendy Videlock, who lives in Colorado, taking a look into a child’s room.

Disarmed

I should be diligent and firm,

I know I should, and frowning, too;

again you’ve failed to clean your room.

Not only that, the evidence

of midnight theft is in your bed—

cracked peanut shells and m&m’s

are crumbled where you rest your head,

and just above, the windowsill

is crowded with a green giraffe

(who’s peering through your telescope),

some dominoes, and half a glass

of orange juice. You hungry child,

how could I be uncharmed by this,

your secret world, your happy mess?

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 ©2003 by Wendy Videlock from her most recent book of poems, Nevertheless, Able Muse Press, 2011. Poem reprinted by permission of Wendy Videlock and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2013 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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