Zap! Poetry Blooms : A Mid-Winter Flower
Children teach me all the time.
Yesterday, after an hour of tongue-twisty wordplay, stories and poems of the "unrhymed kind" too, a teacher took me aside so a girl named Aubrey could privately hand me her "hand-made" card.
ZAP! ZAP! That's the sound of waking up. My heart when I looked at the flower. Kind of electric. Her sun my spark. Now the flower blooms in my kitchen.
"Were there no God, we would be in this glorious world with grateful hearts and no one to thank.
I like Christina Rossetti BUT
Let me rephrase:
Were there no children, I'm not sure my heart could be glad or have space for gratitude.
Yes, I adore Christina Rossetti even with all her cloyin' old smarmy old maple syrupy sticky old quaintness. A woman who wrote way back in the day. She wrote for God and she wrote for children. She has her own feast day (April 27th.). Also, she wrote my favourite Christmas song : In the Bleak Mid-Winter.
Yesterday, the sun came out and a flower bloomed in bleak mid-winter as if never before.
But see the arrow that says open?
Lesson of the week : Open says-a-me !
What I read inside the card-- stays inside the card. That's between Aubrey and me.
After all, some things are sacred : eternity in a blue tulip, too.
PS. Before Christmas, I had the chance to hear Meaghan Smith http://www.meaghansmith.com/ sing Christina Rosetti's lyrics. I felt as if I'd never heard the song before.
ZAP!
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Reader Comments (3)
And Monkeys in My Kitchen re-released...zap!
I love the way you have rephrased that quote! Children inspires and always amaze us in every little thing that they do.
"Nothing you do for a child is ever wasted."
-GARRISON KEILLOR, Leaving Home