{"id":1621,"date":"2009-05-24T15:02:34","date_gmt":"2009-05-24T19:02:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.berkshirelinks.com\/berkshires-news\/?p=1621"},"modified":"2009-05-24T15:02:34","modified_gmt":"2009-05-24T19:02:34","slug":"spinning-poem-by-kevin-griffith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/spinning-poem-by-kevin-griffith\/","title":{"rendered":"Spinning, poem by Kevin Griffith"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Spinning<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I hold my two-year-old son<br \/>\nunder his arms and start to twirl.<br \/>\nHis feet sway away from me<br \/>\nand the day becomes a blur.<br \/>\nEverything I own is flying into space:<br \/>\nyard toys, sandbox, tools,<br \/>\ngarage and house,<br \/>\nand, finally, the years of my life.<\/p>\n<p>When we stop, my son is a grown man,<br \/>\nand I am very old. We stagger<br \/>\nback into each other&#8217;s arms<br \/>\none last time, two lost friends<br \/>\nheavy with drink,<br \/>\nremembering the good old days.<\/p>\n<p>American Life in Poetry: Column 217.<\/p>\n<p>BY Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006  &#8211; American literature is rich with poems about the passage of time, and the inevitability of change, and how these affect us. Here is a poem by Kevin Griffith, who lives in Ohio, in which the years accelerate by their passing.<\/p>\n<p>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 Kevin Griffith, whose most recent book of poetry is &#8220;Denmark, Kangaroo, Orange,&#8221; Pearl Editions, 2007. Poem reprinted from &#8220;Mid-American Review,&#8221; Vol. 26, no. 2, 2006, by permission of Kevin Griffith and the publisher.  Introduction copyright (c)2009 by The Poetry Foundation.  The introduction&#8217;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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Spinning, poem by Kevin Griffith<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1621\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}