Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson, and today is

Monday, February 3rd, 2025. Today's poem comes from Ted Cooser, and it's called So This is Nebraska.

This is a poem that we have featured on the Daily Poem before, but I happen to be, as I record this,

midway through a long weekend in which I will have driven from Pensacola, Florida,

to Concord, North Carolina, and then back again.

So I've already spent a lot of time on the road,

and I will spend more time on the road soon. And I love this poem so much that whenever I am in

the car for long periods of time, I think about it. Now you have to think about it, too.

I'll read it once, offer a few comments, and read it one more time.

So this is Nebraska.

The gravel road rides with a slow gallop over the fields, the telephone lines streaming behind,

its billow of dust full of the sparks of red-wing

blackbirds. On either side, those dear old ladies, the loosening barns, their little windows

dulled by cataracts of hay and cobwebs, hide broken tractors under their skirts. So this is in Nebraska.

A Sunday afternoon, July, driving along with your hand out, squeezing the air, the metal

arc waiting on every post.

Behind a shelter belt of cedars, top deep in holly hawks, pollen and bees, the pickup, kicks its fenders off and settles back to read the clouds.

You feel like that.

You feel like letting your tires go flat, like letting the mice build a nest in your muffler,

like being no more than a truck in the weeds,

clucking with chickens or sticky with honey,

or holding a skinny old man in your lap while he watches the weeds, clucking with chickens or sticky with honey, or holding a skinny old man in your lap while

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