As I walked up the mall last Wednesday, a sign caught my eye: “Free Poems.”
Adjacent was a folding table on which were displayed a plate of cookies; pens and notebooks; and four piles of poems that had been printed and cut to a size small enough to fit in one’s pocket.
Thus did Penn State’s English department (specifically student Sabrina Knox and professors Joe Bueter and, twirling a red parasol, Marcy North) promote participation in Poem in Your Pocket Day, a nationwide observance that radiated outward from NYC beginning in 2002.
Business was brisk, and not just because there were treats and swag. Among the visitors was a plant science major.
“Haven’t you always secretly wanted to be an English major?” one of the poetry purveyors asked him.
The plant sci guy sidestepped by pointing out that he’s graduating in December.
“You’ve got plenty of time,” the poetry hawker told him.
Another visitor grabbed an M&M cookie and perused the piles of pocket poems.
“Which one of these is the most depressing?” he asked. “That’s the one I want.”
Two were about snow, one about fog and one about night, but none was all that depressing.
A high schooler on a campus tour took in the scene. “So cute,” she said.
**
It was a perfect day for a campus tour. I thought, for the 25th time (that’s how long I’ve been here), ‘tis a shame that spring semester ends so early. Sure, I’m ready for a break from grading. But I’d gladly swap our early finish for a later start so I could enjoy, just a little longer, watching the campus humans blossom right along with the tulips and the ornamental fruit trees.
On days like these, the HUB lawn becomes HUB Beach. Footballs and frisbees fly. Would the Poem in Your Pocket folks have come out on a nasty day? Maybe, but I doubt as many people would have stopped.
Certainly, the Ask-a-Moms wouldn’t be out in the cold. They told me as much.
The Ask-a-Moms are Lori Rose and Sue Jackson. For the past couple of years, weather permitting, they wheel a cart and folding chairs to a sunny spot between College Avenue and Pollock Road. The cart displays a basket of Sue’s homemade cookies and a sign that says, “Ask a Mom.”
The free treats pull some students in, but the real draw is Daisy, Lori’s cinnamon-and-white Welsh Springer Spaniel. During the half hour I sat with them, at least a half dozen students — all women — stopped and asked the identical question: “Can I pet your dog?”
One of the students had an Ask-a-Mom question: Her roommate’s boyfriend was coming to visit. The student and her own boyfriend don’t like the guy. How can they avoid hanging out with him?
“Be honest,” one of the moms said. “Tell them you have plans,” the other mom said. Which, taken together, sounded like, be somewhat honest.
Mostly the moms get relationship questions. “We’ve had tears,” they told me.
One Friday afternoon, a guy who had finished his schoolwork for the week asked how he should spend his free time.
“You probably have a load of laundry,” Sue told him.
He did.
“Make good choices,” she added.
She probably wasn’t talking about deciding whether to go with the hot, warm or cold cycle.
I asked the moms what motherhood had taught them.
“Kindness,” Sue said. “Love. Perseverance.”
**
My walk across campus got me thinking about Ken Fuson. One late winter day 30 years ago, Ken’s editor at the Des Moines Register sent him out on the most routine of assignments: a weather story. Ken wasn’t being asked to report on a blizzard or a tornado or a flood. What made the weather newsworthy was that it was a freakishly gorgeous day for the middle of March in the middle of Iowa.
“Ah, What a Day!” broke every rule in the newswriting textbook. Short sentences, we tell our journalism students. Short paragraphs.
The story was one paragraph long. And I do mean long. The paragraph contained 400 words. Those 400 words were crammed into one megasentence. It began thus:
“Here’s how Iowa celebrates a 70-degree day in the middle of March:”
What followed was a catalogue of all the springy things Ken observed as he cruised the city: kids skateboarding, flying kites, hopscotching and shooting hoops; adults washing cars, cleaning barbecues and picking up yard debris; and everyone “letting that friendly sun kiss your face” and “wondering if in all of history there has ever been a day so glorious…”
In 2020, I heard that Ken Fuson, a sweetheart of a guy, had died at the age of 63. He wrote his own obituary, which begins with his marveling that the world will somehow go on without him, but ends on a serious note: “Embrace every moment, even the bad ones.”
Ken knew there are no bad moments on glorious spring days, only pure poetry. (Sorry about the prose.)
