A Secret Poet
Picture a hulking sophomore guy, a football player with C- grades, barely. The school gave up on him. “Take more shop” the counselor said when he dared to ask about an art course. He came from a bi-lingual blue collar home with a carpenter father and a stay at home mom. There were few books at home and no history of college in the family, just stories of the old country, Poland. Good people. Salt of the earth.
One day he jogged down the road to a tag sale and found a real prize. A leather bound book of poetry from 1868. A teasure to keep. His parents never saw it. Neither did his buddies. They wouldn’t understand.
Fast forward 50 years. My husband strides to his bookcase and pulls out his “Poems of Imagination and Fancy” by Tennyson. In thirty-eight years of marriage, I had never seen it. I hugged the man – and that fragile little boy inside – who was so touched by a great classic poet.
Who says hulking teenage jocks don’t “get” poetry?
We all do, when we encounter it.
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