The Love of Poetry & Other Surprises

Last night. I knew going into it that this would not be a typical Friday evening. Harrold and Nancy, my wife’s sister and her husband, were flying in from Dallas. My father-in-law Bud Wagner, WWII vet and author of And There Shall Be Wars, was picking them up at the airport. They were to be here for supper.

I’d hurried home, changed clothes and skimmed through email in an effort to clear my plate for an evening of playing host, and giving myself the liberty to temporarily have no responsibilities. The phone rang. It was my daughter calling home from college to ask if they were here yet. She was all cheerfulness. We shared a few minutes on the phone. I suggested she call back in an hour or so.

Ten minutes later, I heard the gate opening outside my opened office window. The dogs sprang up and went into their berserk welcoming agitation. I walked to the door and, lo! It was my daughter, beaming with joy, in part due to seeing the surprise on my face. She had not called from Morris at all. She’d been hitchhiking and was just down the road with a friend of hers named Matt.

“Happy belated Birthday, Dad,” she said, handing me a present and a card. After hugs and greetings (Susie had joined us at this point) we chatted, laughed, talked, listened to hitchhiking stories.

This kind of unexpected surprise visitation has become something of a tradition in our family, handed down thru the generations. Bud, my wife’s dad, pulled off surprise visits to Nancy and Harrold in Dallas – a thousand miles away – on more than one occasion. Susie and I with the kids in tow pulled off a surprise Easter visit to my folks ten or twelve years ago. A variation of “shock and awe,” you might say.

Shortly after, our guests arrived. A wonderful dinner was shared. At some point I opened the card, which contained a CD of music that Christina made for me with love, and then the package, a book of poetry by Czeslaw Milosz called Facing the River.

After dinner we’d broken up into pairs, jabbering enthusiastically, playing catch up after not having seen one another in a year. Harrold picked up the Milosz book, quietly read a couple poems, then made a soft “wow” type exclamation.

Over the years we've shared many conversations on the widest range of topics. The four of us -- Harrold, Nancy, Susie and I – went to Mexico together in the fall of 1980 to work at an orphanage. The shared experience taught us much, and though we live in different parts of the country, our paths have converged annually. Business, faith, philosophy, child-rearing, pets, home ownership, health, taxes, readings, music… over the years we have talked about many things, but last night for the first time that I can recall we got jazzed about poetry. Milosz set it off.

Sliding into the living room I proceeded to grab books by two of my favorite poets, Rainer Maria Rilke and Billy Collins. I read to Harrold "Another Reason I Don’t Keep A Gun in the House" from Collins’ Sailing Alone Around the Room. Harrold’s face lit up with that one, so I shared another… and then another.

We entered Rilke’s "The Panther"… then moved to my office where, online, I began to share a few of my poems beginning with one about loneliness called "Hitchhiking Across Antarctica." I recited other poems from my website, in part because I enjoy the reciting poetry and in part because I had a captive audience. Each became a catalyst for more stories from each of our life experiences. Like water overflowing its banks, the conversation spilled into new regions in unexpected ways. No harm done, not like hurricanes and floods. But a really fine beginning to their stay with us.

Here’s a poem from Billy Collins about poetry itself. Tomorrow maybe I will share a couple of my own, though as is often the case, sometimes you never know what will happen next.

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Billy Collins