Larry McLeod, Brundidge’s resident poet, was the program guest at the Brown Bag Lunch event Tuesday at the Tupper Lightfoot Memorial Library in Brundidge.

Theresa Trawick, library director, said McLeod has been writing poetry for decades.

“Larry’s poems tell you a lot about him personally,” she said. “Hearing his poems read aloud by him gives you a wonderful sense of who he is and his appreciation for the people in his life and the world around him. It was a wonderful event and I want to thank Larry for sharing his talent with us.”

McLeod read his poems with feeling and deep emotion. His poems blanket life as he has experienced it and, perhaps, as he has imagined it to be.

His poems deal with death and dying. His poems are about the search to finds one’s identity, one’s purpose in life.

His poems honor friendship and memorialize fallen soldiers. “The April Yard” is a memorial tribute to his father. “The Red Bird” reclaims the heart of winter; its empty days made bright by the living color of a red bird.

Larry McLeod’s poetry is a “shadow of who he is,” said his friend Ed Hicks, who honored McLeod and his work with emotional readings of his poetry.

McLeod has a poet’s heart and he’s not sure why.

“Heredity and environment are said to be the reasons why one son is a banker and another is a rock star,” he said. “There is no background of poetry in my family. My mother was inquisitive. I’ve often said that if my mother and my aunt had been in the CIA, the United States would have no trouble with Russia.”

McLeod’s sly wit was obvious, especially, in is explanation as to why he’s the black sheep poet in his family.

“When I was about two years old, I wet the floor,” he said. “I don’t know if I had a diaper on or not. But I slipped on the wet floor and hit my head. The doctor didn’t know if I would live to get to the hospital in Montgomery. I believe that lick on my head is the reason I’m a poet.”

McLeod said he wonders if another lick on the head would have the reverse effect and he would go in a different direction.

“I’m sometimes asked why I write dark and sad poems,” he said. “But, I’m not interested in ‘I think I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree.’ I’m not interested in jingles. I want to write about something important, about the mysteries in life.”

McLeod wants to know who he is or who he is supposed to be. He wants to know about life and the living of it. And, through poetry – the writing of it, the reading of it, the becoming of it, he will find the answers that he seeks.