American Life in Poetry

Poets often do their best work when they’re telling us about something they’ve seen without stepping into the poem and talking about themselves. Here’s a lovely poem of observation by Terri Kirby Erickson, who lives in North Carolina.

Hospital Parking Lot

Headscarf fluttering in the wind,

stockings hanging loose on her vein-roped

legs, an old woman clings to her husband

as if he were the last tree standing in a storm,

though he is not the strong one.

His skin is translucent – more like a window

than a shade. Without a shirt and coat,

we could see his lungs swell and shrink,

his heart skip. But he has offered her his arm,

and for sixty years, she has taken it.