Kooser was recovering from cancer and a crisis of faith in poetry when he began to take early morning walks and was inspired to begin sending a friend short poems on postcards. This is one. It is National Poetry Month and today is Poem in Your Pocket Day. If you like this poem, print it out, carry it around in your pocket today, pass it around, unfold it at some time and share it. Or do so with a different poem.

The quarry road tumbles before me

out of the early morning darkness,

lustrous with frost, an unrolled bolt

of softly glowing fabric, interwoven

with tiny glass beads on silver thread,

the cloth spilled out and then lovingly

smoothed by my father’s hand

as he stands behind the wooden counter

(dark as these fields) at Tilden’s Store

so many years ago. “Here,” he says smiling,

“you can make something special with this.”

— Ted Kooser (thanks, Barbara)

Courtesy of the incomparable pipes of Grace Slick, backed by Jorma’s soaring guitar. Jefferson Airplane on the Dick Cavett Show on 08-19-1969, the day after Woodstock. If they paid attention to the lyrics, this might have been the end of the line for the Airplane’s credibility with some Cavett viewers (and the beginning of their cred for others). (via Dangerous Minds). [Do these terms mean anything to you: Grace Slick? Jefferson Airplane? Dick Cavett? Woodstock? ‘Up against the wall, motherfucker’?]