The poems of Todd Boss

It Is Enough to Enter

Fri, 4 Jun 2010 13:47:38 -0500

the templar
halls of museums, for

example, or
the chambers of churches,

and admire
no more than the beauty

there, or
remember the graveness

of stone, or
whatever. You don’t

have to do any
better. You don’t have to

understand
the liturgy or know history

to feel holy
in a gallery or presbytery.

It is enough
to have come just so far.

You need
not be opened any more

than does
a door, standing ajar.

Apple Slices

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:47:28 -0500

—eaten right
off the jackknife in
moons, half moons,
quarter moons and
crescents—
still
summon common
summer afternoons
I spent as my dad’s
jobsite grunt, framing
future neighbors’
houses out of 2x4s
and 4x6s,
and our
brief and silent pick-
up tailgate lunch-
box lunch breaks
of link sausage,
longhorn cheddar,
larder pickles, cold
leftover roast-beef-
and-butter sandwiches
wrapped in paper,
a couple of pippins
from the Fall Crick
Pick-n-Save, and—
flavored of tin from
the lip of the cup
of a dented thermos
passed between us—
a hard-earned share
of still-chill well
water…
Now
so many waned and
waxed moons later,
another well-paid,
well-fed, college-
bred paper-pusher, I
wonder that I’ve never
labored harder, nor
eaten better.

My Dog Has No Nose

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:35:15 -0500

for beauty. She
knows not where it

nests, nor how it
flushes and goes,
nor how best

to close it
in her mouth’s
soft wallet, nor

whether, if she
brought it and
laid it at the feet

of her lord, he’d
mete out any but
the usual reward.

The Hush of the Very Good

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:05:38 -0600

You can tell by how he lists
to let her
kiss him, that the getting, as he gets it,
is good.
It’s good in the sweetly salty,
deeply thirsty way that a sea-fogged
rain is good after a summer-long bout
of inland drought.
And you know it
when you see it, don’t you? How it
drenches what’s dry, how the having
of it quenches.
There is a grassy inlet
where your ocean meets your land, a slip
that needs a certain kind of vessel,
and
when that shapely skiff skims in at last,
trimmed bright, mast lightly flagging
left and right,
then the long, lush reeds
of your longing part, and soft against
the hull of that bent wood almost im-
perceptibly brushes a luscious hush
the heart heeds helplessly—
the hush
of the very good.

One Can Miss Mountains

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 11:20:08 -0600

and pine. One

can dismiss
a whisper’s

revelations
and go on as

before as if
everything were

perfectly fine.
One does. One

loses wonder
among stores

of things.
One can even miss

the basso boom
of the ocean’s

rumpus room
and its rhythm.

A man can leave
this earth

and take nothing
-- not even

longing -- along
with him.

Nocturne

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 20:32:38 -0600

We tend
to sleep better

when the clock
is wound

than we do
when it’s all

wound down.
I don’t know

why we settle
to the sound.

Somehow
the regular

click and chime
of passing time,

like water, turns
a water wheel

that turns a gear
that turns a stone

that turns upon
another stone

and fine and
finer in between,

our dreams, like grain,
are ground.

Things, Like Dogs

Thu, 31 May 2007 20:54:57 -0500

I came home last night to find that my
laptop had crawled up onto the table

in anticipation of my being there,
and the piano light had switched itself on,

and two eggs had cracked themselves
into a skillet on the stove. It was odd

because I never make eggs for dinner,
but beyond that it was kind of nice.

Kind of nice to know that things,
like dogs, grow fond and want

to be had, to be used, to be played.
I stood in the emptying window light,

my shirtfront swelling with gratitude.
I was just about to say something aloud

to the contents of my house, something
grand and at the same time tender, when

the first word caught
in my throat. I stood there alone

till at last a chair I hadn’t known about
nudged the backs of my knees

and a dusty Kleenex sneezed itself out
of a nearby box I hadn’t put there. Had

I slept, I might have dreamed of rocking
gently under the stars on a ship whose

crew was foreign, whose maps
were thumbed in sand on deck each morning.

My mantel clock rang out a warning,
and later I found this poem at the back door,

looking softly up at me and wagging
its little tail.

How Smokes the Smolder

Thu, 31 May 2007 20:52:23 -0500

at neck, at
shoulder, that

stokes a man
as he grows

older. Nothing
rages, nothing

fumes. No one
races through

the rooms,
alarmed. How

casually he’s
armed. How

gradually arises
what surprises

in his mirrors.
Unawares as

fall runs colder,
pulls he only

slightly tighter
his good wool

sweater, thinner
than ever now

at elbow,
at shoulder.

My House Is Small and Almost

Fri, 25 May 2007 22:55:11 -0500

a hundred years old. Inside,
the oaken posts and beams
make the living room seem
like a glade. When friends
pronounce it comfortable,
it’s 1910 that comforts them,
and nothing I have done.

There must be a room
in the human heart
that’s older than the body.
And it’s good to be there
in that foursquare cathedral
where nothing has changed
since before we were made.