A Pair of Bright Yellow Panties Urging Him On

Ted Kooser is our new poet laureate. He's yet another one of these poetry-writing insurance executives; God, our nation is thick with them, isn't it? Anyway, to mark the occasion, here's one of his poems, "Student":

The green shell of his backpack makes him lean
into wave after wave of responsibility,
and he swings his stiff arms and cupped hands,

backward as up he crawls, out of the froth
of a hangover and onto the sand of the future,
and lumbers, heavy with hope, into the library.

Read three more Kooser poems. (The headline, by the way, comes from "Laundry.")