Mike weighs winning

He broke a man's jaw to go undefeated on national TV—and felt nothing.

Think Mike Lee’s pro boxing career looks like a dream? Inside the ring, yes, he was impressive. But outside of it, the pros and cons weren't passing weigh-ins.

"You'd think that someone who punched other people in the face for a living would want to do a podcast about poems, but ... here we are."

In this episode of There’s a Poem in That, we follow Mike through the final bout of his boxing career—and the invisible fight that was already well underway. What emerges is a story about more than sport. It’s about the addiction to intensity, the emotional crash that follows achievement, and the quiet ways identity can become tied to performance.

"I'm actually ironically an extremely empathetic, un-confrontational person."

Over years of competition, Mike chased the feeling that winning was supposed to bring. But the highs didn’t last. The lows got lower. And eventually, his body began to break down in ways no one could fully explain—until a diagnosis of Lyme disease helped make sense of the pain, exhaustion, and confusion that had been shaping his career all along.

His retirement didn’t end the fight—it only changed it.

In highlights from 3 hours of intimate interview, you'll hear about:

•  The psychology of high performance and adrenaline 
•  Depression and emotional flat-lining after success 
•  Chronic illness and invisible symptoms 
•  Losing an identity built since childhood 
•  Redefining masculinity, vulnerability, and fatherhood 

At the center is a quieter question: If you’re not what you achieve… who are you?

And what happens when you no longer need to prove you're enough?

If this episode resonates, share it with someone who’s been chasing a high—and leave a review with the line that stayed with you.

Transcript

Trigger Warning and Ring Walk

SPEAKER_02 0:00

A trigger warning: this episode contains violence and strong language.

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Introducing the first the challenger fighting up to the red corner, wearing black trunks with gold trim, hailing from Chicago in the way.

SPEAKER_02 0:14

Undefeated middleweight champ Mike Lee. Gloves in the air, struts to the center of the ring at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, backed by his trainer and manager to the roar of the crowd.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Popular University of Notre Dame graduate introducing the undefeated.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

Nobody knows it yet, but he's about to fight his last fight.

SPEAKER_02 0:51

There's a poem in that. I'm Todd Boss. On this podcast, I help strangers discover the poetry in their most intimate stories.

Meet Mike

SPEAKER_03 1:16

But here we are. I think that there's a lot of athletes.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

On this episode, you're going to hear the highlights from three interviews I conducted with Mike over the course of nine months.

SPEAKER_03 1:27

I'm actually ironically an extremely empathetic, non-confrontational person, even though I've literally fought for a living.

SPEAKER_02 1:35

From day one, it didn't take me long to realize Mike is a complicated guy. And boxing.

SPEAKER_03 1:40

It's not all one thing. It's never that we're just a bull in the China shop.

SPEAKER_02 1:44

It's a complicated sport. In his book, The Sweet Science, A.J. Liebling called boxing cutthroat.

SPEAKER_03 1:50

And in the same sentence, beautiful, messy, profane, funny, and so much nuance that kind of goes into fighters and how they got there and who they are. And I think that um that's what most people kind of don't see. They just see the blood and the brutality.

SPEAKER_02 2:07

Mike spotted my pop-up poetry therapy clinic at an Austin Farmers Market and immediately expressed his need for a poem to put words to the nuances in his life. Joyce Carroll Oates wrote of Boxing, its most immediate appeal is that of the spectacle, in itself wordless, lacking a language that requires others to define it, celebrate it, complete it. In this special episode, you'll go with me to the poetic heart of Mike Lee, a fighter who avoids conflict, an athlete whose health has failed him, a son and father trying to understand where his penchant for thrill seeking will take him from here.

SPEAKER_03 2:52

My body was speaking to me and telling me it's done. Because I I think after a while it just didn't kind of align with my soul.

SPEAKER_02 3:10

I don't know about you, but I've never stepped foot in a boxing ring. The thought of someone dedicating their lethal training to achieving my unconsciousness tips the scales for me. I'm sorry, the cons outnumber the pros. But my son joined a boxing gym during a time when he had a lot of teenage frustration to vent, and it was useful to him. Boxing is one of those relics from prehistory that has lost traction lately as a spectator sport, but which nevertheless opens unique apertures on human nature. Chances are you don't box either, but maybe you indulge in other risky behaviors with your body or your thoughts or your feelings. Where do you get your thrills? Is there an arena in your own life where you like to step out to the edge of your capability and push yourself beyond?

SPEAKER_03 4:07

So I was eight years old when I first brought you to boxing gym. And where do you get those instincts from? And the one person in the world that I wanted the most love from, like any young boy, was his dad.

SPEAKER_02 4:17

Talking to Mike, I sometimes get the sense that what he's working out in the ring is something bigger than sport.

SPEAKER_03 4:24

So then the harder I worked at sports, the better I got, and the more like love and admiration I got. I never really loved boxing. I more kind of loved competition and I loved everything it symbolized and it meant. But I didn't love fighting. I was not really a fighter growing up. I wasn't really that kind of kid. I just could fight when I had to.

SPEAKER_02 4:45

Mike started fighting in amateurs when he was just 16. At 18, he won the Chicago Golden Gloves and other major tournaments. But the irony is that even as a kid, Mike's heart wasn't really in it.

Turning Pro, Family In His Corner

SPEAKER_03 4:59

I remember at a young age, I had some sort of like sadness or depression that just didn't quite make sense. Um, whether that's chemical, I don't think it came from, you know, uh one moment when I was abused or something like that. It but it was just, it was just there. I would notice this like dark cloud sometimes. And sports was a great way for me to get out of that. And then at 21, right after graduating, I got signed by top rank and turned pro. I went from being 21 and fresh out of college and not knowing to really thrown in uh some incredible situations, good and bad.

SPEAKER_02 5:37

It was everything Mike had been working towards. The next decade was a blur.

SPEAKER_03 5:42

And then I'm doing Super Bowl commercials and then I'm on TV. And I think that was one of the big benefits is that I I matured a lot, I learned a lot, I grew up super fast in my 20s. I got exposed to a lot early. And obviously the money, like, you know, you're making more money in one night than your friends are making in in years. Mike's dad became his manager. You know, our entire relationship was really all around boxing. It wasn't meant to turn out that way, but he stepped in to help on my behalf, which was phenomenal when it came to money in contracts. There was no one I trusted more, so it was great to have a family member kind of in your in your corner there. Our relationship was father-son, but also so much more around fighter manager and kind of our world revolving around that.

SPEAKER_02 6:32

I asked Mike where his mother fits into all this.

SPEAKER_03 6:35

She kind of just supported me and always wanted me to do what I wanted to do. And I think that she probably didn't know because I didn't tell her how much pain I was in.

SPEAKER_02 6:44

She came to all your fights? She came to a lot of your fights?

SPEAKER_03 6:47

Yeah, I'd say she probably came to all yeah, almost all of them.

SPEAKER_02 6:52

That's a tough, uh, that's a that's one tough lady, uh hard, hard to attend a thing like that, I I would think.

SPEAKER_03 6:59

Yeah, well, you know, give a little backstory. Like my mom grew up on the south side of Chicago, really tough. My dad grew up on the west side, didn't even graduate high school, got his GED, went straight into the army. You know, they came from really rough beginnings. I always ate and I always had food on the table, so I didn't know any different, you know. But my parents came from the, you know, inner city different life than I did because as soon as we could, they, you know, they moved us to the suburbs, and then my dad finally started doing well and started making money. And so I kind of lived like two lives, but there was always that sense of like, could it all go back away? You know, most likely from my mom, uh, that feeling of scarcity.

Fear Of Losing, Mental Crashes

SPEAKER_02 7:44

Toughness runs in the family. For the next 10 years, nothing mattered more to Mike than winning. Or to put it another way, nothing mattered more than losing.

SPEAKER_03 7:56

I was so scared of losing more than getting hurt. I would have gone through anything, and I did. You know, I I fought through a completely shattered hand.

SPEAKER_02 8:04

Boxing can be lethal. Concussions, broken bones. Boxers die from their injuries. But it wasn't just physical damage Mike was enduring. More and more frequently, boxing was messing with his head.

Mysterious Illness Derails a Career

SPEAKER_03 8:17

I would have big fights where I'd be so excited, you know, on top of the world, and then two days later, severely depressed, like couldn't leave the bed. And I would call my dad and tell him about it. You know, they put me on Lexa Pro for a while and I was on some SSRIs. It just never really moved the needle. It wasn't, you know, until I got another fight date or another contract or another whatever new, scary, stimulating thing that I would feel alive again. I noticed that my life revolved around getting so excited for an event, usually a fight, crashing, adrenaline crashing, being depressed. And so I had a lot of mental ups and downs, and I always struggled with kind of being in the middle.

SPEAKER_02 8:59

Everything changed for Mike in 2012. He was 26, three years into a promising career, 11 fights under his belt, and not one loss.

SPEAKER_03 9:09

I started to get pretty sick. My immune system was shutting down, I was getting headaches. Um, we had to cancel a fight. We were going from doctor to doctor.

SPEAKER_02 9:20

Pain and fatigue sent Mike in and out of hospitals, but no one could give him a straight answer. Rheumatologists, a migraine clinic. At one point, he was on eight different medications.

SPEAKER_03 9:32

You feel like you're going crazy and you feel like, you know, no one's listening to you because I got so many blood tests and um CAT scans and MRIs and of my head and of my body and all like, and it all came back, and doctors be like, You're a pretty like you're young, healthy kid. Like you're an incredible athlete. Like, and I'm like, I'm in pain. And it becomes this clusterfuck of ambiguity and gray area, and you know, half the people telling you that you need to go to Peru and do ayahuasca, and then the other, the other side of it telling you you need more medication and possibly surgery.

An Empty Comeback Win

SPEAKER_02 10:08

Mike spent nearly two years out of the ring in too much pain to fight. His comeback fight in Philadelphia was shown live on NBC Sports. 15,000 people watched in the arena. Mike's opponent, another undefeated champion.

Stuck in Turkeytopia

SPEAKER_03 10:24

I remember not wanting to fight the night before. We just got done with weigh-ins, and after weigh-ins, you get 24 hours from weigh-ins to the fight, and you kind of get this time to hang with your team, eat, rehydrate. And it was the first time I was like really kind of nervous about the fight in a way that like wasn't healthy, like scared of getting hurt. Before I got sick, I was never scared of getting hurt. I was more scared of losing. I was more scared of embarrassment. I had a I'd rather go out on a stretcher tonight than lose mentality. And I took that ideology into training, into getting ready, into everything. I was like, you better kill me if you're gonna beat me. But after I got sick, it just was never the same. And now all of a sudden, now I was worried more about getting hurt than winning. Uh, which is a completely misleveraged place to be for a boxer. So that fight, ironically enough, I got a six-round knockout. I broke his jaw. I think I was winning the fight, but it was pretty close. And like sixth round came in. I hit him with a beautiful right hand, twisted his head back, broke his jaw. I heard he went to the hospital later. I won the fight. I remember being in the dressing room and it was like a comeback fight. I'm still undefeated. I just beat another undefeated fighter on national TV by knockout, had my hand wraps on, and just like couldn't care less. Like, was was so just like emotionally drained that through what I went through the last couple years that I wasn't even like happy or excited. And normally those are the best moments. You get a knockout, you jump on the ropes, like the adrenaline high is nuts. You can't sleep all night. I just remember sitting back in the dressing room and like just not being happy, just not being excited. Like that feeling just left. Nothing was ever the same. It was like pre-getting sick, post-getting sick with my life. Before that, I felt really young, vital, immortal. The excitement of fighting was never the same. I was always pulling myself into it just through pure will.

SPEAKER_02 12:34

Have you ever known in your bones that you needed to quit a toxic situation but couldn't bring yourself to do it?

SPEAKER_03 12:43

I was tired of being in pain, and I knew as much as my identity was tied up into this and my heart was in it, and I was getting pressure from other people, including my family, that this would lead to more pain. And while it seems very obvious from here on out, like I was 26, I could have said I'm done. It just wasn't that easy. It was it was my own decision. It was tough for me to say no to you know, at that point, I was doing subway commercials, I was on I was literally in hospital beds and I would turn on TV and I'd see myself on a fucking subway commercial. Um it's tough to turn that off, you know, and so it was like this weird, super empty feeling, but also knowing like I'd be an idiot to say no to this opportunity and money. It's Turquytopia at Subway. Turkey topia?

SPEAKER_02 13:35

Is that even a word? You could say he was stuck in Turkey topia for years, returning to the ring to fight not one opponent, but two, an opposing fighter and an opposing illness.

SPEAKER_03 13:50

I was struggling. I was on painkillers, I was, you know, barely getting through training camps. You know, I was getting to a point in my career where I was top five in the world. So like these fights now were everything I dreamed of and pushed for. But at the same time, I was not happy and you know, I didn't was scared to do something different, scared to quit. So just kind of kept pushing through, but these training camps just became so brutal on my body. But ultimately what happened to me is I think I was so tired of pain, and I knew that this path I was choosing would only bring me more pain. And unfortunately, it took me another, you know, six years to get off the ride.

SPEAKER_02 14:28

And while fighting for a junior world title where he became number two in the world, through pure heart and balls, kind of pushed through eight more rounds.

SPEAKER_03 14:37

Mike finally did with a broken rib. And then I got back to the dressing room and basically like collapsed. Like they rushed me to the hospital because I knew it was broken, something was wrong, and I think we were worried it was gonna puncture the lung or something. So the rib was some of the worst pain I've ever experienced. And you can't do much for a broken rib, so they put me on some pretty heavy dose painkillers in the hospital, and then those made me nauseous. So then I was worried I was gonna throw up, which would have been way too much pain for a broken rib. So they gave me anti-nausea medication. It was just a shit show of a day and night.

The MGM Grand

SPEAKER_02 15:53

To that last fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

SPEAKER_03 15:57

And so I ended up fighting for world title, my last fight, and kind of knowing in my head that this was gonna be it, not enjoying the process, multi-city press tour, your face all over, MGM Grand, everything you kind of dream of as a little boy, like, and just kind of dead inside, lying that I was excited about the fight, just falling out of love for it. And I remember this weird feeling coming over me, wondering am I going back to the hotel tonight or am I going to the hospital tonight? I remember it like it like hit me. You're in the dressing room, you're about to walk out, and you're scared. You're this scared little boy, you know, and it's primal. And it's okay to be scared, but it's like how you push through it. So I I had that some level of that fear every single fight. Every single fight, whether it was a small one or a big one. But this was a different type of fear. This was like very worried about my health. It was much more cognizant finally of like what does the next uh 60, 70 years look like instead of I'm mortal. This ride is never gonna end. And let's go fast and die fast. I mean, I fought my ass off that fight. Uh I didn't quit. I got knocked down twice, maybe even three times. So the ref stopped the fight. I was very upset about it. I wanted to keep going. It's just I I have that in me. I'm not gonna quit until you kill me, for better or worse, and mostly worse.

SPEAKER_02 17:33

I must admit that line stayed with me for a few days. I I have that in me. I'm not gonna quit until you kill me.

SPEAKER_03 17:39

I'm not gonna quit until you kill me. I'm not gonna quit until you kill me. I'm not gonna quit until you kill me.

SPEAKER_02 17:44

I'm not gonna quit until you kill me.

SPEAKER_03 17:51

I remember getting back to the dressing room and feeling I started crying. I was in the dressing room, I started crying, and I told my team, like, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I let you guys down. They didn't feel that way, of course, but in the moment I thought they did. But I also I felt a huge sense of relief. Like, I don't want to do this anymore. And it's over and I'm done, and I never have to do this anymore.

Lyme Disease, a New Normal

SPEAKER_02 18:11

Not until after he retired from the sport did Mike get the diagnosis that put many, if not all, of his physical ailments in perspective. Lyme disease is caused by a tick bite, and if left untreated, the infection can spread and cause the chronic, irregular, phantom-like symptoms that make it so notoriously hard to identify. For years, and maybe for much of his boxing career, Mike had been fighting an illness he didn't realize he had.

SPEAKER_03 18:42

Chronic inflammation, headaches, some anxiety and depression that comes with it. And granted, I I know I deal with, you know, being a boxer post-concussion, so it's that's part of it too. Um but a lot of like aches in my joints. The best way I describe it to people is I wake up most mornings and it goes in ebbs and flows. I've had some better years, I've had some tough years, I've had some better days, tough days. I wake up feeling hung over, brutally hung over almost almost every day. And I don't drink, I eat incredibly healthy. Uh, but it feels like I was out drinking all night without without the fun part. I just power through it, but I haven't felt healthy in a decade. My heart goes out to my it's just a new normal.

SPEAKER_02 19:32

Chronic daily pain is no normal I would wish for anyone. And on top of it, he's had to renormalize to the loss of his career.

SPEAKER_03 19:42

I attached my entire self-identity, my worth to who I was as a professional athlete. And then when that's done, you're still like, well, who am I now? I had to kind of like mourn a death, and that was the death of my identity in a career that started when I was eight years old. So from eight to 32, it's you know, who I was and what I felt like I wanted to do. And so it's like almost like a death, so to speak, like how I think about it and speak about it, which brings sadness, to be honest.

SPEAKER_02 20:17

He's trying to hold the nuance of it. Some days that's easier than others.

SPEAKER_03 20:22

The whole like struggle that I have with just wrapping my head around everything. I try to live in the moment and play. I love the saying amor fati. It's basically like the Stoics said, like, you have to love your fate, right?

SPEAKER_02 20:36

By embracing amor fati, you can transform life's inevitable setbacks into opportunities for growth rather than viewing them as burdens. But practice this mindset though he might, Mike can't help looking back and questioning whether the whole career, starting with dad's innocent encouragement, was really worth it.

The Words He Needed

SPEAKER_03 20:59

It's tough because, in one aspect, what's done is done, you know. And on the other hand, maybe it does help me heal and make sense to try to come to grips with my decision and and if it was worth it, if he thinks it was worth it, or or why he kept pushing me or aligning me with a sport that would cause so much, without a doubt, damage. That was life-threatening. I mean, people die in boxing, point blank.

SPEAKER_02 21:27

Mike's not as close with his dad as he once was.

SPEAKER_03 21:30

And I don't really know why. I don't know. Maybe he wanted me to keep fighting.

SPEAKER_02 21:34

You've never you haven't really had a conversation about that.

SPEAKER_03 21:37

No, I haven't really. I I I probably need to and want to. Um, just you know, like most thing most things in life, I tend to avoid conflict. So you know, like anybody else, I wanted to feel like I was enough. And that's what got me into boxing was feeling like I was enough and getting love from him and other people.

SPEAKER_02 21:58

Mike makes a wish now. And something in his voice changes.

SPEAKER_03 22:03

I just kind of looking back now, wish that when I was in a hospital room after a fight with a broken rib or a broken hand or a broken nose till fucking 3 a.m. That someone came in and just told me, Mike, you're enough. Like, you don't have to do this anymore. Looking back now, I didn't know what I needed, but that's what I needed.

SPEAKER_02 22:33

In our third and final interview, Mike tells me he's taken up a new sport, big wave surfing.

SPEAKER_03 22:40

I need that feeling of like this might fucking kill me, or this is exciting.

SPEAKER_02 22:46

And like ocean waves themselves, I see Mike's high-risk, thrill-seeking pattern repeating.

SPEAKER_03 22:53

If I wasn't riding that wave, I was depressed and there was fucking nothing in between. Um, that's why post-boxing has been tough for me because as much as it hurt me and there's pain and I was tired of it, it also gave me that feeling of being alive. It's like a need to go fast, you know, a need to be on the highway and just go a little too fast on what you're supposed to go. That's why I love surfing now. It's the only thing I've found that gives me that adrenaline rush, um, but doesn't absolutely like decimate me.

SPEAKER_02 23:26

But surfing can decimate you. And Mike admits he often takes it too far.

SPEAKER_03 23:32

I'm like a psychopath. Like people around me don't understand it unless they've been in it. Like we were in Hawaii and I charged this wave that I shouldn't have been on. Like everyone knows Hawaii is the most dangerous wave, right? And I remember my leash broke, I got tumbled over really bad. I covered my head, but kind of like hit some reef with my hand, and I was underwater for a long time, and then all of a sudden I'm up and my board is gone. They got I'm a good swimmer. But I don't want to say I was close to drowning, but it was like not good, you know, for a while. I was there was a definite feeling of oh fuck, I might drown here, like let like figure this out, you know. And normal people would stop surfing. I didn't even quit that day. I went in and got my board and like sat on the beach, catch my breath. I was like rattled, and I paddled back out.

SPEAKER_02 24:26

One major change to Mike's identity is that he's become a dad.

SPEAKER_03 24:32

You know, when he was first born and very young, he looked like my father. He looked like my dad. Mike's son, Luca, is two years old. He's the best. I mean, I know a lot all parents think their kid is the best, and we're wired that way, but I I'm just so grateful he's, you know, he's healthy, he's happy, he's very energetic. He's a typical boy. You know, he's running around, he's smashing things, he's loves dinosaurs, he loves trucks. He's a very sweet, sweet kid. He loves music right now. He's got this little guitar that he plays and like sings, and we take him to music class. And that's really cool for me because I always joke like I I want to teach him how to fight. I think that I want to teach him how to box, but I will strongly, strongly discourage any sports early on that could cause concussions, given kind of what I've gone through and what I've seen. And so I I love that he loves music.

SPEAKER_02 25:31

Yeah, you can't really hit your head with a guitar unless you're uh one of those, uh one of those hair rockers, you know.

SPEAKER_03 25:37

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. He's he's got some time before that. No, it's like an acoustic guitar, so it's not very it's more of a Jack Johnson vibe than like a Metallica vibe.

SPEAKER_02 25:47

One of the most important things for Mike is letting Luca know that he's enough, whatever he ends up doing in his life.

SPEAKER_03 25:54

I want to expose him to as much of the world, you know, good and bad, as I can. I don't want him to live a sheltered life by any means. But also, you don't want your kid to suffer, but you know that a little bit of struggle and suffering is, I mean, how it's what made me who I who I am today. So I I will say through all the ups and downs of my career, I'm so grateful that I still went for it, that I still had the guts to put myself in the ring, like literally and figuratively. And that doesn't have to be in a ring or on a football field. I really want to instill in him what was instilled in me at a young age, which was to go for it, to think outside the box and to to never give up on your dream. And that that sounds corny, but I think that that life unapologetically will always outbeat the life of conservatism.

SPEAKER_02 26:53

How do you imagine kind of giving him a healthy relationship that falls somewhere in between finding your passion and going for it on the one hand and not becoming an adrenaline junkie like his dad on the other hand?

SPEAKER_03 27:11

I don't know. Because, you know, while I definitely don't want him to get into like boxing, I I also don't want to be the person to stifle. I mean, if if he loves jumping out of airplanes and skydiving is his passion at the same time, like who am I to kind of stop him? So I don't know. I I think I'm probably gonna struggle with that. And and maybe he just doesn't become that kind of um person. It you know, I don't know whether that's nature or nurture or how that plays out. I I do, I guess I do worry about that, his little like adrenaline junkie side and and following certain paths of destruction, so to speak, that that I followed. But at the same time, I think if I held him back from that significantly, he'd he'd always resent me. So I don't want to do that.

SPEAKER_02 28:06

I don't know what kind of poem you would write for Mike, but when I heard him say, I'm not gonna quit until you kill me, I had to wonder, does he harbor a death wish?

SPEAKER_03 28:16

I need that feeling of like this might fucking kill me or this is exciting.

SPEAKER_02 28:20

Who's to say whether the right poem, persuasive in just the right way, might not save his life? I think that what I want most for him, especially in the child rearing years ahead, is a mellowing out. I want his relationship with adrenaline to mature before he kills himself. In the weeks it takes me to write Mike's poem for him, that's what I think about the most. I want to write a poem that will reassure him that he's enough, that life's simple pleasures are some of the best, and that his risk-taking days can be safely behind him forever. I'm gonna send you uh the poem now. It's a PDF. And you can open it while I read it to you so that you can I decided to dedicate the poem to Mike's son, Luca. You ever have a poem written for you before, Mike?

SPEAKER_03 29:20

No. I mean, maybe maybe in like first grade or something, we had to write poems to one another, you know, maybe. Maybe on like a little crap I had in first grade or something, but no, this is this is a first for me.

SPEAKER_02 29:40

Got it? Cool. Okay, it's called in time every thrill. You see it?

SPEAKER_03 29:45

Yeah, I do.

SPEAKER_02 29:47

In time every thrill seeker, lows so low for highs, sky high, speed needer, rush crusher, waves always monster, and why thrills to meeker in time every thrill seeker lows so low for highs, sky high, speed needer, rush crusher, waves always monster and why thrills to meeker, milder pursuits, not because he's weaker, but because the roots of wonder deepen as a man grows older, son, and soon he finds his sense of fun refined in truth by currents colder, sanctums graver, and minerals richer for rarity and purity than any ring or trophy traded for clarity in his youth. His sense of fun refined in truth by currents colder, sanctums graver, and minerals richer for rarity and purity than any ring or trophy traded for clarity in his youth.

SPEAKER_03 31:18

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 31:22

You know, I think when I saw for Luca, I started tearing up. You can read and hear this poem again on our website, poeminhat.com.

SPEAKER_03 31:31

Yeah, the the the the line that really sticks out to me is he he finds his sense of fun refined in truth by Currance Colder, Sanctum's Graver.

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SPEAKER_02 31:40

Is there an unwritten poem in your life? I know there is. Leave me a message at 808-300-0449, and let's find it together.

SPEAKER_03 31:51

But richer, more pure moments. So that like, and that's one thing I've kind of been struggling with is like enjoying that the slowing down.

SPEAKER_02 32:01

And so that that part uh there's a poem in that is written and produced by me, Todd Boss, with support from executive producer Hela Plittman, editing by Claire Wiley, post-production by Ben O'Brien, and music by Nerianeve and Ash Whitaker. And and the reason I decided to dedicate this to Luca is Tapit is independently self-produced, but listeners like you are stepping up to support it. Make a tax-deductible donation at poeminhat.com, or find me, Todd Boss, on Patreon, where I share poetry, audio, video, and extras from the show. In a way that your maybe your dad never did for you.

SPEAKER_03 32:44

Yeah, that's really interesting too. Huh.

SPEAKER_02 32:47

When you said when you say at the end traded for clarity in his big thanks to recent contributors, Sherry Hendrickson, Dan and Rochelle Krauss, Deanna Sara, and Susan Schaefer. You help us make the world more poetic. One new friend at a time. I appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah. I hope so. I think you're right. I'm Todd Boss reminding you that there's a poem in everything if you're paying attention.

SPEAKER_03 33:18

Now it's I get to I get to try to find and replace things that don't risk my life.