Wheelchairs

A Rainy Morning

by Ted Kooser

A young woman in a wheelchair,
wearing a black nylon poncho spattered with rain,
is pushing herself through the morning.
You have seen how pianists
sometimes bend forward to strike the keys,
then lift their hands, draw back to rest,
then lean again to strike just as the chord fades.
Such is the way this woman
strikes at the wheels, then lifts her long white fingers,
letting them float, then bends again to strike
just as the chair slows, as if into a silence.
So expertly she plays the chords
of this difficult music she has mastered,
her wet face beautiful in its concentration,
while the wind turns the pages of rain.





Kooser's poetry captures moments in time.  He does not moralize or make a pitch to sell you emotion.  He simply paints a picture. "A Rainy Morning" is one of my favorites.  I imagine Kooser drinking coffee in a cafe.  He looks up and sees this young woman in the window, and boom: a poem sweeps out of her and into Kooser's pen.  Kooser paints her with skill.  He captures her beauty and her determined spirit in just fifteen lines.  Where others may have pitied "a disabled woman" caught in the rain, Kooser, like all good poets, has the ability to see truth.

 Abled-bodied persons often associate words like "limiting" or "restrictive" to the wheelchair.  Artist Sue Austin wanted to do something about that.   She drew parallels between her wheelchair and scuba diving gear.  With scuba gear, divers are able to explore a world--a beautiful world--that would otherwise be unavailable to them.   So it is with a wheelchair.   A wheelchair allows speed, agility, and distance for people with physical disabilities.  Wheelchairs are about freedom. They are not about restrictions.  Sue is brilliant.  Her art is creative.  Watching her ten minute video will change the way you view powerchairs (as she likes to call them).  When something of beauty--which was once hidden from the senses--is revealed, that, my friends, is poetry.*  

  


To watch another video that is exceptional along the same vein, watch Notable: the story of people with disabilities living in Uganda. 

*Because I am married to a logician, I am forced to admit to myself and to you that "beauty revealed" in not a definition of poetry but rather one characteristic of poetry.