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EPISODE 10/11/12: Brooks ages into paradox

  • toddbosspoet4
  • Apr 9
  • 3 min read

This upside-down 3-part edition of TAPIT opens on a poem, and ends on a dream. When Todd knocks on a stranger’s door to deliver a poem he wrote about the occupant three years ago when he lived across the street from her, a surprising friendship unfolds. 


TODD SAYS

I’m not in the habit of poetry-bombing my neighbors, but something about the poem I wrote three years ago about an elderly gardener compelled me to share it with the person who inspired it. Turns out, Brooks is not only an avid poetry reader, but a kindred spirit. 


It started with a note on her mailbox, and it ended with not one but three poems, (plus an extra one, "Both," written by Brooks herself!) and an unusually vivid dream. 


I wonder how many more doors poetry could open in our neighborhoods and our hearts, if we let it. 



I’m so grateful to my newfound friend Brooks for welcoming me through her screen door and entrusting her stories, intimacies, and many kindnesses to me. 


BROOKS SAYS

"...a surprise beginning, some brief trust bumps, and the sweet, steady unfolding of a friendship based on curiosity, respect, vulnerability and the life force energy of poems."



Three for a Neighbor 


Three Weeks Across the Street from Her and I’ve Yet to See Her Face 

because she’s either rump-up rummaging weeds 

from flower patches or sun-bonneted pushing an 

electric mower over a square of garden-crowded 

lawn or shielded under the standing-seam eave of 

her front porch eating dinner from a plate on her 

lap or fully enwrapped as she is on this and every 

Sunday afternoon in the cocoon of the hempen 

hammock she hangs in like some sort of silkworm 

suspended end to end from the lower branches of 

her live oak which owing to its worthy genes and 

old age and a bowed carriage and its easy spread 

shares its earthy aromas and shady deeps with 

all of us grateful neighbors and strangers and sleeps. 


Three Years Go By and I Knock but She Doesn’t Answer 

and I’ll have to wait to show her what I wrote about her 

so I pencil out a note to clip by wooden clothespin 

to the wall mount mailbox on the porch and allow her 

lazy cat to inspect the tips of my fingers and turning 

to go I let the leafing warmer than average January breeze 

which here in her front yard seems more hers than ours 

entrance me as I dream it must entrance her too 

with the music it makes perusing the live-oak’s racks 

of open paperbacks as though choosing which to savor 

and which to savor later when the neighborhood’s quieter 

or the mood is right or the light is brighter and then I let it 

read me cover to cover poem to poem line by line and 

letter by letter blow it all away for the chance to rewrite her. 


Three Visits Later and She Finally Lets Me Read It to Her 

in her cozy front parlor with windows and front door closed 

to the cold front against which this week her main chore’s 

been moving all her potted plants indoors but first there’s 

a cup of hot water for me and she drinks tea and we’ve been 

getting along so comfortably it’s almost like we’ve known 

each other these three years and longer for compatible humor 

and candor about the late husband and the girlfriend and 

all that came before so that when the time comes to end 

another hour we’re hugging our farewells like friends and 

making plans and as I cross her garden again and bow 

beneath a low hung bough her Chinese New Year hongbao 

luck packet in my jacket pocket I’m reminded how our arts 

sing deep seeded long rooted springtime into our hearts. 


Brooks's poem, "Both"


both 

i live on both sides of the handcuffs, 

wanting the bindings and 

resisting the restraints. 

lonely without the connections 

furious with the compromises. 

both responsive to the flow and 

willfully constipating it. 

i am aging into paradox. 

inelegant, authentic. 

tearful, and filled with rage. 

jingling with joy and 

consumed by curiosity. 

i am sullen with choices 

and sulky with inabilities. 

goofy with silliness, and 

gut-laughing 

with the meaningful meaninglessness of it all. 



Brooks's grandmother's vocabulary list
Brooks's grandmother's vocabulary list


 
 
 

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and International Bureau of Custom Poetry are trademark productions of Todd Boss Originals.
 

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