"A Jar of Buttons," by Ted Kooser

This is a core sample
from the floor of the Sea of Mending,

a cylinder packed with shells
that over many years

sank through fathoms of shirts —
pearl buttons, blue buttons —

and settled together
beneath waves of perseverance,

an ocean upon which
generations of women set forth,

under the sails of gingham curtains,
and, seated side by side

on decks sometimes salted by tears,
made small but important repairs.

+ Ted Kooser

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a former Poet Laureate of the United States, Kooser is one of the most thoughtful, approachable poets of the American plains (he hails from Nebraska) — or anywhere else, for that matter. He describes his mission this way: “I write for other people with the hope that I can help them to see the wonderful things within their everyday experiences. In short, I want to show people how interesting the ordinary world can be if you pay attention.”

“A Jar of Buttons” is a classic example: here Kooser evokes a whole world through a small, modest, often overlooked object filled with even smaller ones. It’s a plainspoken, American variation on a sonnet (fourteen lines, with a rhyming couplet to close), slant-rhyming “tears” and “repairs” to button up the poem’s themes — and thereby invite us to see the ordinary objects all around us in a more expansive, empathetic, imaginative light.