{"id":23501,"date":"2011-06-03T00:25:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-03T07:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/news\/ones-ship-comes-in-poem-by-joe-paddock\/"},"modified":"2011-06-03T00:25:00","modified_gmt":"2011-06-03T07:25:00","slug":"ones-ship-comes-in-poem-by-joe-paddock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/life\/ones-ship-comes-in-poem-by-joe-paddock\/","title":{"rendered":"One\u2019s Ship Comes In | Poem by Joe Paddock"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joe Paddock is a Minnesota poet and he and I are, as we say in the Midwest, \u201cof an age.\u201d Here is a fine poem about arriving at a stage when there can be great joy in accepting life as it comes to us.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

One\u2019s Ship Comes In<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

I swear<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

my way now will be<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

to continue without<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

plan or hope, to accept<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

the drift of things, to shift<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

from endless effort<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

to joy in, say,<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

that robin, plunging<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

into the mossy shallows<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

of my bird bath and<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

splashing madly till<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

the air shines with spray.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Joy it will be, say,<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

in Nancy, pretty in pink<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

and rumpled T-shirt,<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

rubbing sleep from her eyes, or<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

joy even in<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

just this breathing, free<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

of fright and clutch, knowing<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

how one\u2019s ship comes in<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

with each such breath.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation,<\/a> publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.\u00a0Poem copyright \u00a92009 by Joe Paddock from his most recent book of poetry, Dark Dreaming, Global Dimming, Red Dragonfly Press, 2009. Reprinted by permission of Joe Paddock and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2011 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. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joe Paddock is a Minnesota poet and he and I are, as we say in the Midwest, \u201cof an age.\u201d Here is a fine poem about arriving at a stage when there can be great joy in accepting life as it comes to us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":233,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-23501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23501"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/233"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23501\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23501"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=23501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}