Distance and Time

        Poetry 180 was a project initiated back in 2002 by the poet laureate Billy Collins -- a project with the goal of providing for students a thoughtful and accessible poem for each day of the school year.  A recent email alerted me to a slightly mathy poem within that collection -- Poem 081, "After Years" by Iowa poet Ted Kooser (also a former US poet laureate);  I offer Kooser's poem below.

From Solo: A Journal of Poetry, 1996.

Today, February 2, is Groundhog Day.  Celebrate the day with some poems. 

Before calculators we did more counting!

One of many sources of good poetry online is American Life in Poetry, collected by former U S Poet Laureate Ted Kooser.  In Column 368, Kooser offers "Numbers" by New Jersey poet, Jared Harel (first published Fall 2010 in The Cold Mountain Review).  Kooser's introduction notes, "My mother kept a handwritten record of every cent she spent from the day she and my father were married until the day she died. So it’s no wonder I especially like this poem  . . . "