This marks the fourth time we’ve published a poem by David Baker, one of my favorite writers. Baker lives in Granville, Ohio, and teaches at Denison University. He is also the poetry editor for the distinguished Kenyon Review.

Old Man Throwing a Ball

He is tight at first, stiff, stands there atilt

tossing the green fluff tennis ball down

the side alley, but soon he’s limber,

he’s letting it fly and the black lab

lops back each time. These are the true lovers,

this dog, this man, and when the dog stops

to pee, the old guy hurries him back, then

hurls the ball farther away. Now his mother

dodders out, she’s old as the sky, wheeling

her green tank with its sweet vein, breath.

She tips down the path he’s made for her,

grass rippling but trim, soft underfoot,

to survey the yard, every inch of it

in fine blossom, set-stone, pruned miniature,

split rails docked along the front walk,

antique watering cans down-spread—up

huffs the dog again with his mouthy ball—

so flowers seem to spill out, red geraniums,

grand blue asters, and something I have

no name for, wild elsewhere in our world

but here a thing to tend. To call for, and it comes.

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 Baker, whose most recent book of poems is Never-Ending Birds, W. W. Norton, 2009. Poem reprinted from Virginia Quarterly Review, Vol. 84, no. 2, Spring 2009, by permission of David Baker 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.