Photo courtesy swimswim

Introduction by Ted Kooser: Here's a touching father-son poem by Jennifer Gray, who lives in Nebraska. If you're not big enough to push a real mower, well, you make a mower of your own.

Summer Mowing

He has transformed

his Tonka dump truck

into a push mower, using

lumber scraps and duct tape

to construct a handle

on the front end of the dump box.

One brave screw

holds the makeshift

contraption together.

All summer they outline

the edges of these acres,

first Daddy, and then,

behind him

this small echo, each

dodging the same stumps,

pausing to slap a mosquito,

or rest in the shade,

before once again pacing

out into the light,

where first one,

and then the other,

leans forward to guide the mowers

along the bright edges

of this familiar world.

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 ©2015 by Jennifer Gray, “Summer Mowing,” from Plainsongs, (Vol. XXXV, no. 3, 2015). Poem reprinted by permission of Jennifer Gray and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2016 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’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.

Happy Father’s Day to my husband, my dad, my father-in-law, and all the other dads out there!

On one of our attempts, Tank didn’t have enough impulsion going in and had to make a big effort to get over the second fence, consequently “bouncing” me out of the saddle, where I clung to his neck like a scarf, making heroic efforts to stay aboard. Kind of like this (but with less success):

Tank stopped obligingly while I struggled to stay on, but eventually I slid to the ground, landing on my feet.

When I related this story to my friend Laure, she asked, “Did you take a bow?”

Laure’s question made me think about how some failures really need some form of positive acknowledgment—like taking a bow. After all, when we fail at something, we’re most likely pushing our comfort zones or trying to master something new. A spectacular failure comes from taking a big chance or going hard for something we want. That should be celebrated, even if the outcome wasn’t quite what we intended.

I’ve written about failure before, but coping with it is a lesson that bears repeating. Failing is important. It means you’re stretching, growing, and learning. Instead of hiding our failures, we can at least acknowledge them, if we can’t quite imagine celebrating them.

So the next time you fail, spectacularly or not, take a bow. Acknowledge that beautiful failure, be grateful for it, and move on.

“Happiness is a thing to be practiced, 

like the violin.”

Introduction by Ted Kooser: The University of Minnesota Press has published a wonderful new collection of bee poems, If Bees Are Few, which may in some small way help the bees and will certainly offer some honey to poetry lovers. Here's just one poem, by Heid Erdrich, who lives in Minnesota. Her most recent book is Cell Traffic: New and Selected Poems from the University of Arizona Press.

clinging a moment before I flung her

to the ground. Her gold is true, not the trick

evening light plays on my roses.

She curls into herself, stinger twitching,

gilt wings folded. Her whole life just a few weeks,

and my pain subsided in a moment.

In the cold, she hardly had her wits to buzz.

No warning from either of us:

she sleeping in the richness of those petals,

then the hand, my hand, cupping the bloom

in devastating force, crushing the petals for the scent.

And she mortally threatened, wholly unaware

that I do this daily, alone with the gold last light,

in what seems to me an act of love.

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 ©2016 by Heid Erdrich, “Stung,” from If Bees Are Few: A Hive of Bee Poems (Univ. of Minnesota Pr., James P. Lenfesty, Ed., 2016). Poem reprinted by permission of Heid Erdrich and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2017 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’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.

“Perfectionism is our denial of two very basic truths of existence: we are not perfect; and we are not, ultimately, in control. When we absorb the law of perfection, we are infected with the virus of self-doubt, which eats away at every area of our lives. The more perfect we are, we believe, the more valid we are as people. But with every advance in one area, we find ourselves wanting in another. We worry that we are not good enough, and, therefore, on some level that we do not deserve love, happiness, or maybe even life itself.

“We fear our imperfections will expose us as failures when actually they show the places we have grown, the markers of our realizations, our unique situation in the sands of time and cycles of nature. In the words of Leonard Cohen, ‘There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.’”

—Lucy H. Pearce, “Overcoming Perfectionism in a Culture That Promotes It,” Tiny Buddha’s Guide to Loving Yourself, ed. by Lori Deschene