Grandpa’s heart as big as poet’s words

My grandfather was a good man. He worked hard, more than 40 years in the steel mills of the Deep South. He pulled long shifts, double shifts and overtime.

He was a man with many interests, but not a lot of formal education. The Second World War and then a family to support may have interrupted his education, but he knew how to learn whatever it was he wanted to know.

He read books. He was never without a book.

My grandfather always had a book in his pocket, or curled into the domed top of his metal lunchbox. He kept a book by the bed and on the table by his favorite reading chair.

There was usually a book in the car, the latest prize from a trip to the used book store downtown.

He was never without something to read, and whenever I could manage it, he wasn’t far away from me.

At night, after dinner and before I was sent away to bed by my child-weary grandmother, I curled up next to him. He liked to read aloud to me.

That was the way I claimed him.

One of my grandfather’s favorite books was a big, well-thumbed, volume of Carl Sandburg’s poetry. It was kept in the mahogany bookcase, the one with the glass doors. The one that sits in my study now.

Some nights, when he was in the mood for a little poetry, or, perhaps, too tired to start anything longer, my grandfather would reach into the bookcase and pull out Sandburg.

He would open the book, pick a poem he liked, and away we went.

When my grandfather read Sandburg to me I was transported. I was carried away.

I can still hear the sound of my grandfather’s deep voice, the way it vibrated and rumbled through me as I sat tucked under his arm, my head resting on his chest.

I walked down dark, gritty, dangerous city streets, a babble of voices all around me, tall skyscrapers towering overhead. Crowds pushed me down sidewalks and the air was full of interesting smells and sounds.

I stood on the windswept prairie, a hot wind blowing my hair across my face. I rode the rails across a landscape as flat and empty as anything can be, through tall grass that dipped and waved and bowed with the wind.

I saw the world through a poet’s eyes. I heard it in the voice of a man with the heart of a poet.

That was many years ago. But I only have to pick up my own volume of Sandburg’s works to tumble back.

I still love to read Sandburg. I like the way he thought and wrote about things; the way he watched people and listened to what they said. And what they didn’t say.

My grandfather was a good man. He kept me safe and well. He put food on the table and ideas in my mind. He was the true north of the compass I would follow the rest of my life.

My grandfather gave me a good start. He gave me Sandburg. He gave me poetry about steel mills and train cars and ordinary people.

He gave me words that would sing and paint pictures and tell stories.

He gave me the world.