59. American Life in Poetry: Column 464

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

We human beings think we’re pretty special when compared to the “lower” forms of life, but now and then nature puts us in our place. Here’s an untitled short poem by Jonathan Greene, who lives in the outer Bluegrass region of Kentucky.

Untitled

Honored when
the butterfly lights
on my shoulder.

Next stop:
a rotting log.

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 ©2001 by Jonathan Greene, whose most recent book of poems is Distillations and Siphonings, Broadstone Books, 2010. Poem reprinted from blink, September-October 2001, vol. 1, no. 2, by permission of Jonathan Greene and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2014 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.