American Life in Poetry

What a marvelous gift is the imagination, and each of us gets one at birth, free of charge and ready to start up, get on and ride away.

Can there be anything quite so homely and ordinary as a steam radiator? And yet Connie Wanek, of Duluth, Minn., makes it come alive.

Radiator

Mittens are drying on the radiator,

boots nearby, one on its side.

Like some monstrous segmented insect

the radiator elongates under the window.

Or it is a beast with many shoulders

domesticated in the Ice Age.

How many years it takes

to move from room to room!

Some cage their radiators

but this is unnecessary

as they have little desire to escape.

Like turtles they are quite self-contained.

If they seem sad, it is only the same sadness

we all feel, unlovely, growing slowly cold.