Susan Ludvigson...

When I was an undergraduate in English and Creative Writing at Winthrop University, I was lucky enough to have several classes with the poet Susan Ludvigson.  I think about her often and try to read everything she's written several times every year.  This is a poem that I read this afternoon, again, for about the millionth time, and I decided to borrow some ideas from it for a short story that I've been working on.  It is called, "Love at Cooter's Carpet, Fort Lawn, S.C.," from the collection A New Geography of Poets:

"Daily I go to the carpet warehouse.  

The men think I can't make up my mind.  

But the truth is, I have fallen in love 

with the young ex-football player 

who lights the dingy room with his hair.  

Even machines can't help him add,

so we spend hours figuring and refiguring 

costs--pad and labor, stairs and tax,

his patient golden head bent over the numbers,

the muscles in his arms reflecting shadows 

like water under summer clouds.

each time he starts the motor on the forklift,

slowly pushing that long steel rod

into the center of a roll, then

lifting it out for me to see.  Oh--

it's as if an inner sky were opening,

and all his hazy calculations

fall like stars into my heart."