I Love the Hour Just Before
a party. Everybody at home getting ready. Pulling on boots, fixing their hair, planning what to say if she's there, picking a pluckier lipstick, rehearsing a joke with a stickpin in it, doing the last minute fumbling one does before leaving for the night like tying up the dog or turning on the yard light. I like to think of them driving, finding their way in the dark, taking this left, that right, while I light candles, start the music softly seething. Everything waiting. Even the wine barely breathing.
Credit
Copyright © 2013 by Todd Boss. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on November 8, 2013. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.
About this Poem
"I've been reading The Field by Lynne McTaggart, about quantum physics, how we're all connected by the energy between us. I wrote this poem a year ago, but it's been five years since I hosted my last annual October party, a ritual I've neglected. Shame. I miss it. The poem's appearance in October I take as a prompt from the universe: to host again, and more often."
—Todd Boss
Author
Todd Boss
Todd Boss was born in 1968 and raised on a cattle farm near Fall Creek, Wisconsin. Boss received his BA from St. Olaf College in 1991 and his MFA in poetry from the University of Alaska Anchorage in 1994. He is the author of two books of poetry: Pitch (W. W. Norton, 2012), winner of the 2012 Poetry Midwest Booksellers Choice Award, and Yellowrocket (W. W. Norton, 2010). He lives in Minnesota.
Date Published: 2013-11-08
Source URL: https://poets.org/poem/i-love-hour-just