This morning I took my small, strong cup of coffee down to the dock and put my feet in the cool pond. I watched the sun come up over the trees. I may go back down as the light fades, if the bugs are not too intense, and as Ted Kooser suggests “to ride this day down into night,” to write in my notebook and “smooth the unreadable page with the pale ghost of my hand.” I so loved the images this poem constructed that I made a set of plates with dust prints of the text in 2018.

A Happy Birthday

This evening, I sat by an open window and read till the light was gone and the book was no more than a part of the darkness. I could easily have switched on a lamp, but I wanted to ride this day down into night, to sit alone and smooth the unreadable page with the pale gray ghost of my hand.

—Ted Kooser, from Delights and Shadows, Copper Canyon Press