Let’s hear it for the boys, courtesy of Tom

Today, a treat. Tom McGrath, longtime Chicago editor, writer, and spiritual director, donned the Poem Elf hat and set to work on a Rumi poem, “Has Anyone Seen the Boy?” The poem, his reflections on the poem, the poem placement, his reasons for the placement—it’s all great and worth the few minutes it will take you to read it because it will stay with you all week. What’s especially wonderful for readers of Poem Elf is the male perspective. That’s something I just can’t offer. Many thanks to Tom for sharing his musings and wisdom.

 

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HAS ANYONE SEEN THE BOY?

 

Has anyone seen the boy who used to come here?

Round-faced troublemaker, quick to find a joke,

slow to be serious, red shirt

perfect coordination, sly, strong muscled,

with things always in his pockets, reed flute,

worn pick, polished and ready for his talent,

you know that one.

Have you heard stories about him?

Pharoah and the whole Egyptian world

collapsed for such a Joseph.

I would gladly spend years getting word

of him, even third or fourth hand.

 —RUMI 

                                                (version by Coleman Barks and John Moyne)

 

 

Missing? by Tom McGrath, Assistant to the Poem Elf

 

Rumi is a trickster who packs a playful punch in every poem, always to a serious end. I usually discover something of value in his work, yet I am also aware there are vast horizons of meaning I only see as if “through a glass darkly.” I can’t say “Has Anyone Seen The Boy?” is my favorite Rumi poem, but it’s the one that comes to mind most often, especially when I see bitter, beaten-down men with only the light of anger in their eyes. I believe Rumi was urging men, especially, to seek the youthful lad they were, in all his pure potential, because his value to them is far beyond gold.

 

I first discovered this poem around the time my father was between bouts with cancer. A long-lost friend of his from high school called him one day from out of the blue. “I’ve been thinking of you, Pat,” said Don. And that began a weekly long conversation in which the two would reminisce about what they called their “glory days,” when Dad was a basketball hero and Don was the team manager and a budding entrepreneur who went on to a number of big jobs with professional basketball teams. I’d hear Dad laughing and was so grateful for how these conversations brought him back to life again—full of energy, radiance, and joy. I was reminded of the words of my friend Sr. Kathy Bertrand, SSND, who would advise fellow nuns who felt they’d lost their vocation to “remember the dreams of your younger years.” Kathy knew that drinking deeply from the wellspring of memory could re-ignite their passion for life—their own precious and wonderful life—and lead them not backward, but onward to a better future to which their heart was calling them.

 

For his birthday that year, I took my father on a day trip to visit his friend Don up in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. They let me sit in on their lively lunch conversation that went on for hours. On the way home, Dad told me, “That was the best day of my life!” I knew there were many best days in my father’s life, some far better even than that visit. But I knew what he meant. He’d not just paid a visit to Don, but also to the boy who had such dreams and who now could realize so many had come true. That night I mailed Dad and Don a copy of this poem. Neither man mentioned a thing to me about it and I’m sure they wondered “Who is this Rumi fella and why did Tom give me this?” But it was the best to express the joyful mystery I had witnessed that day.

 

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I chose to tape this to the brick wall of our parish gym where, decades ago, a group of young boys played “fast pitch” just about every day each summer. The game was ideal for urban kids. It could accommodate from three to a dozen or more players. Equipment needs were simple: a 9” rubber ball, a bat, and enough baseball mitts for half the players. Sometimes one of the dads would come join the fun and quell the endless arguments over fair or foul, ball or strike, but otherwise the boys were on their own.

When I was working in my back yard I could hear the sound of the ball smashing against the wall and knew a game had started. In time I could even tell when a batter had connected with the pitch and if it was a ground ball only good for a single, a screaming line-drive double, or a homerun wallop that travelled clear across the church parking lot to hit the side of the school building.

 

Then one summer they were gone. The outline of the strike zone remains all these years later, and, sentimental romantic that I am, I keep hope some summer I will hear the sound of the ball slapping against the brick wall again, only to find one of the original players has brought his kids to visit the field of memory their dad has told them so much about. Don’t lose sight of the boy!