Every Monday and Thursday night, I try to experience the Phoenix Rising program with Art from Ashes, when youth gather at The Spot on 21st and Stout Street in Denver to create and share poetry.

It's always an awesome experience. The youth were kind enough to let me take pictures for use in my blog. I'll let them tell more of last night's story.

And here you are-- as presented in this blog every Friday, the poem of the week from American Life in Poetry-- I'll just add that I've read an interview with Ted Kooser in Writer's Digest this last weekend and WOW I admire him. He seems so modest and honored to be U.S. Poet Laureate. He readily admits that everyone needs to have their own approach to poetry. I love that.

By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate

Writing poetry, reading poetry, we are invited to join with others in celebrating life, even the ordinary, daily pleasures. Here the Seattle poet and physician, Peter Pereira, offer us a simple meal.

A Pot of Red Lentils

simmers on the kitchen stove.
All afternoon dense kernels
surrender to the fertile
juices, their tender bellies

swelling with delight.
In the yard we plant
rhubarb, cauliflower, and artichokes,
cupping wet earth over tubers,

our labor the germ
of later sustenance and renewal.
Across the field the sound of a baby crying
as we carry in the last carrots,

whorls of butter lettuce,
a basket of red potatoes.
I want to remember us this way--
late September sun streaming through

the window, bread loaves and golden
bunches of grapes on the table,
spoonfuls of hot soup rising
to our lips, filling us
with what endures.

Reprinted from "Saying the World," 2003, by permission of Copper Canyon Press. Copyright (c) 2003 by Peter Pereira. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture.