American Life in Poetry #169: Rick Campbell.

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

I remember being scared to death when, at about thirty years of age, I saw an x-ray of my skull. Seeing one's self as a skeleton, or receiving any kind of medical report, even when the news is good, can be unsettling. Suddenly, you're just another body, a clock waiting to stop. Here's a telling poem by Rick Campbell, who lives and teaches in Florida.


Heart

My heart was suspect.
Wired to an EKG,
I walked a treadmill
that measured my ebb
and flow, tracked isotopes
that ploughed my veins,
looked for a constancy
I've hardly ever found.
For a month I worried
as I climbed the stairs
to my office. The mortality
I never believed in
was here now. They
say my heart's ok,
just high cholesterol, but
I know my heart's a house
someone has broken into,
a room you come back
to and know some stranger
with bad intent has been there
and touched all that you love. You know
he can come back. It's his call,
his house now.


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 (c) 2006 by Rick Campbell and reprinted from "Dixmont," Autumn House Press, 2008, by permission of the writer. First published in "The Florida Review," Fall, 2006. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 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.



Also at Virtual Grub Street by/about Ted Kooser:

• The Ted Kooser Page: Links to online Interviews, Recordings, Poetry, Prose, Reviews, Photos and more;
• American Life in Poetry #166: R. S. Gwynn;
• American Life in Poetry #165: Robert Bly;
• American Life in Poetry #164: Ellen Bass;
• American Life in Poetry #149: Linda Pastan;
• American Life in Poetry #146: Marvin Bell;
• American Life in Poetry #107: Naomi Shihab Nye;
• American Life in Poetry #70: Sharon Olds;
• American Life in Poetry #68: Wendell Berry;
• American Life in Poetry #26: Claudia Emerson;
• More from American Life in Poetry >>>