POEM
The Hush of the Very Good
Todd BossYou 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.
Todd Boss, “The Hush of the Very Good,” from Poetry (February 2007). Copyright © 2007 by Todd Boss.
Source: Poetry (February 2007).
This poem originally appeared in the February 2007 issue of Poetry.
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Poet Todd Boss grew up on a cattle farm in Wisconsin, and was educated at St. Olaf College and the . . . MORE »
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