The first poem we published in this column, back in the spring of 2005, was by David Allan Evans, the Poet Laureate of South Dakota, and it’s good to publish another one today, having recently had our five-year anniversary.

Girl Riding a Horse in a Field of Sunflowers

Sitting perfectly upright,

contented and pensive,

she holds in one hand,

loosely, the reins of summer:

the green of trees and bushes;

the blue of lake water;

the red of her jacket

and open collar; the brown

of her pinned-up hair,

and her horse, deep

in the yellow of sunflowers.

When she stops to rest,

summer rests.

When she decides to leave,

there goes summer

over the hill.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by David Allan Evans from his most recent book of poems, This Water. These Rocks. San Francisco Bay Press, 2009. Reprinted by permission of David Allan Evans and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2010 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.