American Life in Poetry #34: Jim Daniels.

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

In this poem by Pittsburgh resident Jim Daniels, a father struggles to heal his son's grief after an incident at school. The poem reminds us that when we're young little things can hurt in a big way.



Dim

Today my son realized someone's smarter
than him. Not me or his mom --
he still thinks we know everything --
one of the other kids, Nathan. Making fun
of him at the computer terminal
for screwing up at the math game.
Other kids laughing at him. Second grade.
I'm never gonna be as smart as him,
he says.
I'm never gonna be as smart
as half my students if we're talking
IQs. He doesn't want me to explain.
He wants me to acknowledge
that he's dumb. He's lying in bed
and taking his glasses off and on,
trying to get them perfectly clean
for the morning. I'm looking around
his dark room for a joke or some
decent words to lay on him. His eyes
are glassy with almost-tears. Second grade.
The world wants to call on him.
I take his hand in mine.




Reprinted from "The Paterson Literary Review," No. 32, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2004 by Jim Daniels, whose most recent book is "Show and Tell: New and Selected Poems" University of Wisconsin
Press, 2004. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.




Also at Virtual Grub Street by/about Ted Kooser:

• American Gothic (a review of Delights and Shadows by Ted Kooser. Copper Canyon Press, 2004);
• Ted Kooser and the American Life in Poetry column;
• American Life in Poetry #32: Kurt Brown;
• American Life in Poetry #31: Gloria G. Murray;
• American Life in Poetry #30: Naomi Shihab Nye;
• American Life in Poetry #29: Debra Nystrom;
• American Life in Poetry #28: Ron Rash;
• More from American Life in Poetry >>>

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