Universal
Star so pale — her worn out shoes, her tired back, her eyes once blue. Sky so low — garden wall — child listens, sirens wail. Where they go — what I know — a quiver full of symbols in a gale. [ 729 ]
Tag Archive for ‘Child and Man’
Bumblebees’ Wings and Old Dolls’ Clothes
Our apricot tree has bloomed right through the frosty weather. Now we’ll see how many of them stick. The first blossoms appeared during the last week of February. Now it’s St. Patrick’s Day and they are still opening, some puffed and ready, while the oldest look like hairy spiders attached to the limbs — at least that’s the way they looked yesterday afternoon, when I paid the tree a visit […]
Dizzy
Just after dark, two women in their fifties, home from work, one out to get her mail, the other stretching her legs on the sidewalk after her drive home — both offer a greeting and a smile — and I feel like a little boy on a merry-go-round, turned by fate’s precious little girls — who kindly do not laugh at me. March 3, 2020 [ 683 ]
All Things Considered
Opinion, some say, is a right we hold — as long as we agree — but I prefer to understand and learn, to whatever possible degree my limits deign to show — and to pray the child in me may have the room to play and grow — and never stop, and stand, and say, I know. [ 661 ]
High and Low
A baby’s high chair so high his head’s in the clouds, and, to feed the dear angel, we must climb the nearest mountain through ice and snow with his tiny spoon in our hands — but why do we imagine such things? To explain, I suppose, the ice on our shoes, and the spikes and the ropes. A man’s thoughts so low we must sound the very depths of hell […]
By the Falling Star
When you see young children living and working their beautiful miracles, do you smile and say, They are something at that age, or, We are something at that age? They, or we — the difference, I think, is a great one, and tells much about you. The same might be asked of how you view those who are far ahead of you in years. Because the very young and the […]
Canvas 319 — Gifts and Curses
When a child draws a face like this, we wonder at his gifts and curses, as if age were something art rehearses, and art what age reverses. [ 566 ]
Canvas 301 — Clouds
Wondered the child, Is God in the clouds, or are the clouds in God? And God said, That is a question I love. And the child sang low. And the child sang on. [ 504 ]
The Enigmatic Child
Maybe you really can make something of yourself, as the time-worn advice goes, or threat, or promise, or admonition, depending on who says it or thinks it and under what circumstances, including you and your own. Maybe you really can become something or someone, a person worthy of respect, and on, and on, and on. I don’t know. It all seems rather strange to me. In a way, isn’t it […]
After the Fall
Why does the bird sing? Because it will? Because it must? Because it can? As the child is a poet, the child is a man. And the man goes out on a limb. Why does the man sing? To break, and to bend. To break . . . . . and to bend. [ 20 ]
