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It Was a Lark


and cuckoo: girls
pushed boys 

round a track
on trikes. You
charged — my 

wheels were
spun — we won!
Fifty-one years

our race was
run. It was a lark,
with cuckoo 

clocks and 
quilts and trips
and dives and

games and 
Swiss fondue
and sons, 

daughters
and sons
of sons, 

and moons 
and northwoods
loons and 

fun. You gave
and gave. You
navigated

while I drove 
Rte 66 Chicago
to the Pier 

and everywhere, 
6 continents 
made close.

You were
my friend. 

Too soon

the cuckoo
strikes: 
  We’re all
on trikes again,

the girls
and boys
all grown,

and my world
bigger now
my lark 

has flown.

from Ken, for Sue
by Todd Boss

It Was A Lark by Todd Boss

Jon's wife Christy got pancreatic cancer ten years ago, but Jon still carries the fear of losing her. It's a long hallway from diagnostics to recovery, but Jon's found the right doctor: Todd helps him stop over-intellectualizing, cutting through the voices in his head, until only sweet remission (from the Latin "to relax,") colors the horizon. Revealed to Jon on the eve of Thanksgiving, 2022, Todd's tongue-in-cheek poem is written in the talky après-dinner-party style of Tony Hoagland, and features candid, ad-libbed cameos by Thomas Merton, Flannery O'Connor, Cormac McCarthy, Czesław Miłosz, and Raymond Carver, who, like all of us, just wants to be loved. From sorrow to joy and back again, this story lets Christy have the final word, and has Jon breathing a sigh of relief. 

Todd's poem for Jon, "Thanksgiving," quotes a stanza of Tony Hoagland's "Among the Intellectuals," from his posthumous collection, Turn Up The Ocean (Graywolf Press). Used with permission.

Episode 2: Jon

Episode 3:  Ken

Cycles

Winter comes to the valley blanketing the world hushed and grey

cold moons
are spent indoors Səxʷši’cəlʔs
the moon to put your paddles away
pull the canoes onto the beach this is the time for weaving for making things
because this is the dying season death settles and pulls
the leaves from their trees
like a dance like a ritual of grief and ceremony

the land falling back into hibernation small waterways quiet and frozen

but the tide is coming in and a rush of wingspan beats feathered knives across the sky

a wind of swans returning a formation that sings
I’m alive	I’m alive

and now the river yawns and wakes snow melts down the mountains blue herons dive
for blackmouth salmon

an alpaca is born
in the middle of a meadow limbs loose and clumsy
its birth marks the moon of the Salmonberry

when the earth stirs and the huckleberries
are gathered while mothers pick wild flowers

Pədstəgʷad calls the world into blooming Red Sockeye and new life

water rushing
and hawks sailing over star shaped irises that circle a fir tree
in prayer

this is the season
for celebration and movement through days long with light

to embrace the time as it cycles through another moon

the final phase Pədx̌ aʔx̌ aʔ
is for longhouse fires and storytelling a time to learn from elders
this moon translated means sacred

Cycles By Sasha LaPointe

Host Todd Boss enlists the help of Indigenous poet Sasha LaPointe to  motivate Bonnie on a journey of healing and discovery.

Episode 4: Bonnie

Hymn

 It’s weird where  
tears 

track versus where 
they go

unspilled. 
If creeks, if

rivers flowed so
arbitrarily,

there’d be no
safe 

place to tent, 
let alone 

build and settle
down.

Give us instead
a headwater. 

A valley 
for the lily. A

regularly
filled bed.

Praise Him 
who bids us swim

where 
we might drown.

—for Holly

Hymn by Todd Boss

Composed by Pedro Osuna. 
Vocals by Hila Plitmann.

Holly's Redemption

A Deer


                 It seems to me to be again as if
our twenty years were no more than a dream—

This morning, driving in the steam of dawn
in an autumn woods, I happened upon
a yearling deer that was, unlike her tawny
sisters, a brilliant white. All white and white
and white she was, a great astonishment 
of white—
                  her body a flag, a flame of snow 
in the bower, she was a glow, a ghost
in the mist around her. And oh, my dear, how 
I wished you were there!
                                          She trembled so 
to see me slow to the gravel and halt. I had to 
wait her out, so filled with praise was I, my 
heart. What grace, what art, what eloquence 
she bore! Though no less and no more a deer 
than any deer in the forest, still it seemed these
trees were holier for her being there, in the
recitative of a leafing breeze. 
                                                 I wanted 
eternity with her, but I was not her owner, 
and soon—with a jolt—like a joyful spirit she 
bolted over, joining the plainer flock that 
waited invisibly on the other side—like a bride—
and with her into the ether danced my pride
in having even briefly known her.

A Deer by Todd Boss

Your Name :: My Name
for Phillip James, formerly Felipe Javier Hernando Meneses,
for myself, Ricardo De Jesús Blanco Valdés aka Richard White

Your name like my name :: infused with the singsong of Spanish from our mother countries that
never quite spoke to us in the vernacular of our souls :: not your Mexican cacti or crime, not Mariachis or immigrants, not tequila or la Virgen de la Guadalupe—forgive the clichés :: not my Cuban palm trees or poverty, not mambo or brothels, not rum or la Virgen del la Caridad—forgive my own clichés :: perhaps clichés are all we know :: all we need or want to know of who we are, or are not?

Your name like my name :: inked on a U.S. immigration card :: let’s imagine we had the same,
exact number :: 531135 :: a palindrome, an omen :: destined to be sojourners all our lives :: back-and-forth, north and south, east and west :: through countries and cities mapped out by the compasses our minds needling home :: have we found it in our imagination :: or in the dirt
beneath our feet :: or are we still looking for it in the clouds that pause in our eyes?

Your name like my name :: out of tune in English :: the flat, unrolled r’s of my Rrr-ica-rrr-do that I’d eventually translate into Richard :: a new me without a silent h :: the F of Felipe that you’d trade for the Ph of Phillip :: both of us wanting to love and be loved in the sounds of English we loved :: we, the names of Anglo-Saxon kings we donned :: we, our blood’s royal belonging to what we felt we belonged to :: or not?

Your name like my name :: the names in which we heard ourselves come to life :: me, in the meter of poets who allowed me to sing myself anew as their music :: you, in the language of sci-fi novels that spoke another world you needed to believe in :: and the names we both heard in the gunshots of movie westerns we loved :: cowboys who didn’t doubt their purpose :: always oneself belonging to a one landscape :: no questions, unlike us :: why didn’t we rename ourselves Wayne, Clint, or Copper?

Your name like my name :: in the names of the students we’ve called out when taking attendance :: Juan, Anita, Alberto :: whose lost eyes we’ve looked into as deeply as our own :: Cristina, Carlos, Carmen :: how we taught them to listen to the light of their inner voices :: how we gave them our breaths to shout out, We are here :: as alive and necessary as we learned to be by the grace of the words that saved us, too :: isn’t that what we have in the end—words?

Your name like my name :: the names we found in love :: you, in your Emily :: me, in my Mark :: names that spelled-out destiny, surprise, and surrender for us :: letters that dispelled our names from our Jungian selves :: the jesters, the bon vivants, the heedless lovers we thought we’d be forever :: their names that freed us to be one with them :: two clouds, two waves, two rays of lightning melded together :: Philemily, Marichard :: aren’t those are true names too?

Your name like my name :: Ricardo James Felipe White Richard Meneses Phillip De Jesús :: all the names we’ve let go of, all the ones we’ve taken :: names as teachers and husbands, caretakers and changemakers, chameleons and questers :: and all the names we have yet to call ourselves by, everywhere we have yet to claim as our own or not, real or imagined :: your name, mine:: always aching to spell H-O-M-E for ourselves.

Hymn by Todd Boss

There's a Poem in That

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