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This Morning in a Morning Voice

By Todd Boss Todd Boss

to beat the froggiest

of morning voices,

my son gets out of bed

and takes a lumpish song

along—a little lyric

learned in kindergarten,

something about a

boat. He’s found it in

the bog of his throat

before his feet have hit

the ground, follows

its wonky melody down

the hall and into the loo

as if it were the most

natural thing for a little

boy to do, and lets it

loose awhile in there

to a tinkling sound while

I lie still in bed, alive

like I’ve never been, in

love again with life,

afraid they’ll find me

drowned here, drowned

in more than my fair

share of joy.

Poem copyright © 2008 by Todd Boss, whose most recent book of poems is Yellowrocket, W. W. Norton & Co., 2008. Poem reprinted from Poetry, December 2008, by permission of Todd Boss and the publisher.

Source: Poetry (December 2008).

Biography

Poet Todd Boss grew up on a cattle farm in Wisconsin, and was educated at St. Olaf College and the University of Alaska Anchorage, where he received an MFA. Boss’s pared-down, idea-driven poems are propelled by internal rhyme and balance clarity with a nuanced attention to sound. “I think of poems as pieces of music, or a work of architecture,” he told the Utne Reader in 2009. “The poem is a space that you’re inviting someone . . .

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