you sought
to fill me as if
there was space
I did not want empty;
the sky holds nothing
-
Day 2
crisp seed pod
warmed in afternoon sun
hollow now
seeds scattered but one,
bursting toward sky -
Childcraft, 1964 ed.
loud,
no books
but encyclopedia,
hiding behind
end-table,
drapes fidgeting,
national geographics
layered openalien
religions,
bangles elongating
necks, circular
cornfield in desert,
white-clothed
bedouin, tattered scrolls,
peking manpoems
spread on top,
stutters untwisting,
hours unwrapping,
“this is my rock
and here I run
to steal the secrets
of the sun”——————————————–
A late as usual response to the dVerse conversation from last week about early memories of poetry. The comments surfaced a very specific memory that took a bit to unpackage.The last four lines are from a David McCord poem in the 1964 edition of World Book’s Childcraft (volume 1, Poems and Rhymes), a book that held much of my learning-to-read years. Here is the whole wonderful poem.
This is My Rock
This is my rock
And here I run
To steal the secret of the sun;This is my rock
And here come I
Before the night has swept the sky;This is my rock,
This is the place
I meet the evening face to face.