You lift the chalice and toast the long life of your friend there in the mirror, who wanly smiles, but does not drink to you. From Ted Kooser s One World at a Time , University of Pittsburgh Press. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press. The prospect of a diagnosis creates a peculiar dread.
Imagination leaps into the unknown, fomenting a range of possible horrors.
In The Urine Specimen, Ted Kooser, ever respectful of this fear, temporarily tames it and transforms it into ritual. By addressing you throughout the poem, the speaker insulates himself from fear while drawing the reader intimately into the mundane situation. In the clinic bathroom there are the patient waiting for diagnosis and the self who observes that patient from an emotional remove, with a more fanciful viewpoint. Rather than arriving at an absolute answer, Kooser infuses the science, the medicine, with human spirit, rather than allow the spirit to be invaded by science. The poet gently transcends the banal and grave in the clinic bathroom.