Poems

I listened to my daughter recite "To Any Reader" by Robert Louis Stevenson. It is, like any good poem, a thought-provoking poem. It makes one think about childhood and what is now versus what will be later. Stevenson's poem mentions a child "far, far away," and one cannot "call That child to hear you" for he "has grown up and gone away" to be busy with other things. The poem to me seems to softly lament the loss of childhood due to the inevitability of adulthood. It is a touching poem for me as a parent.

Hearing my daughter recite the poem caused me to hold an impromptu talk with my kids about poems. I asked them what a poem is. They answered, "A story." I replied, "Yes, a poem could be a story, but it could also be about the writer expressing the writer's thoughts and emotions. Or a poem could be a thing like a rainbow." But the main point I wanted them to realize was that they too could write poems. I told this to them directly--that they too could write poems. After all, nothing is impossible, not even writing poetry.