Reading Poetry To Mother

You may say it is akin to shop talk
Poetry on poetry
But stay with me and think again
Of playfulness and rhyme
For I say, oh the things we learn
From poetry
Carved into
Yellowed, aging lines
Meant for
All of us
Though hidden in the open
in children’s
Poetic verse
Prose
And rhyme

Penned for children

Such as Christopher Robin
And Pooh
The silly old worn bear

Try reading
Yes aloud
To those who
Hold it buried
in the wrinkled folds of
Youth
Fertilizer for the soul
The where they went to run
And play
To hide
To laugh
The words that they grew up with
Those that
Comforted, provided calm
A place to run away
To laugh
When life was not so
Gay

No, not at all
No, not all all

You may say you silly goose
Sitting round in broad daylight
Uncovering a mother’s past
Through words of poetry
And prose

But  have you seen
The cover, stained
By water marks
Made from rings of iced cold tea
Or glasses
Of sweet fresh milk, or
Is it a more
A ring of tears, perhaps

And  have you seen the belly jiggle
Born witness to a head cocked laugh
Pausing to catch one’s breath
Choking on the silliness
The
Dawdling on the page
Savoring the humor
Of simple, ordinary rhyme

Lingering on every word
Of boys, and woods
And bears
And of
Dragging off
Sleepily to bed

Poetry with mother
Reveals
As poetry is known to do
It is
Nothing short of healing
As poetry is known to do
Too
Especially when it’s Pooh

Yet in our stale and stoic state
Of almighty grownup-hood
We find no time for rhyme
And lines of boyhood
Ramblings
Written from the hand of
Such a tender man

We muse and wonder
How did he
Crawl into the chidhood soul
How could he know so much of
Loneliness and hiding
And making up new friends
Pretending this pretending that
He is all of us
When we were oh so very young

You may say its akin to shop talk
Poets writing poetry on reading poetry
Aloud
But I can say
Quite humbly
I met and made
Some friends along the way
Milne and Pooh and all of his
Friends and relations
Are now mine

But so much more than that
I grew to love my mother
As a child
Once again
For we both became children
In one poetic moment
At the exact same place in time
Reading Milne’s most
Cleverest of rhymes
Sitting there together
Soaking
In the wit
Making memories
As we laughed and lingered
On the page
Without so much as a worry
Or a care
Lingering over life
And rhymes
About a boy and his bear