My English teacher introduced me Cadbury's Book of Chidren's Poetry turning poetry completely real and accessible. These kids were not writing of The Lady Of Shallot or Lord Lochinvar. Our worlds were much the same. Their vocabulary was no bigger than mine and yet they had perceived something that I had completely missed.
Reading that book turned me aware of my thoughts, the flow of life around me and suddenly poetry was everywhere. I wrote the first tentative verses stumbling with familiar words in their new context like it were a foreign language.
Between feeling and expression there is an asymptotic gap never quite meeting except at infinity. Sometimes a child will reach infinity with the ease of a genius like Pablo Neruda.
Years later I would be charmed by Poetry in Motion in the Metro on the way to work. At a time when I was hurting so much that I was desensitized to any feeling except pain, a chance verse would make me want to be alive once again.
I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha...
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