Tag: Winnie The Pooh

Reading Poetry With Mother

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 1 Comment

 

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

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A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Poetry

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 12 Comments

A funny thing happened on the way to poetry. And humor is long over due. Or due. Or something that involves laughter and joy. Because the world has a weight of its own and a heaviness that is expressed in phrases like the weight of the world.

And then there is the path to poetry. Which had some funny haha and funny odd things happen along the way to it.

There is a long story there that would wind you down a path you would rather not travel on. Should you choose to go there. You would likely feel lost and having not laid bread crumbs along your way, you may be a little mad at the writer and say I never really intended to walk down that long and winding road with you though I do love Paul and The Beattles.

And as much as I love a good story and you probably do too if you are reading, you are prone to like writing. Somehow the two seem to go together like sweet tea and mason jars. i know you thought I was going to say like hand and glove. I almost did. How did you know. But liking a good story as you do you may not be ready for a very long one.

And brevity is possibly a reason for embracing poetry. Though writing about brevity can actually be rather long and cumberson and tiring. So when writing about brevity and poetry it is important to keep it on the brief side or you may in fact lose your reader.

And if there is anything you don’t want to do when writing it is lose your reader. Oh, perish the thought of a lost reader along the way.

But there is a funny sort of thing or two that are worth telling in a short and sweet matter because the matter is sweet. So that would add a touch of the ironic which is always or almost always good to add to keep the reader interested. Irony is just so darn ironic.

But when you set upon a path and you don’t know where you are going, its a bit like being lost in the Hundred Acre woods like a bear and his friends and a  young boy named Christopher Robin who probably wanted to be lost because of the weight of his world. But he had his friends to keep him company in a wild and wooly world in those woods. Yes, he had a friend to hold his hand.

So when on this path of unknowing that involves poetry you may find that what you discovered all along was simply not really poetry at all. Though poetry was a byproduct. Or maybe you found poetry plus a large red cherry on top. Though not as laden with sugar as those cherries. But maybe it was sweeter and richer, in fact.

Because writing is a solitary endeavor, often. Most often. Which is good, because God is close by. But there is still the deep craving for another.

And writers can be lonely sometimes if they are not careful. Unless they turn on the music of the world, not the heavy world but the crisp and light and beautiful noise of the God-creation.

God had the brilliant idea that we live in community and breathe in community and in so living and breathing,  perhaps also writing in community.

So a funny thing happened on the way to poetry. I found a beautiful friend along the way. And you may too if you were to write with a friend, new or old.

You just may find the eternal on the path to your writing.

You may find a treasure. A friend.

This post is dedicated to Holly A. Grantham at A Lifetime of Days for stepping out in faith at the invitation to write in the unknown. She is a gift, she is a beautiful writer and she is now a friend. Her writing home is found here at www.walkingintheslowlane.blogspot.com. She has taught me more than words can express. But one day I will try. For now this is my offering of thanks.

linking with Emily and Michelle

Just Give Me All The Children’s Books

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 4 Comments

There is this line of Pooh that shows up time and time again.
You painted lines on your stairs
And left them there when that house sold.
Poetry on the stairs and ragged Pooh propped there too.
Folded worn out bear.
A tribute on the stairs.
But you took Pooh with you, as you always did.

You gave her Pooh in Latin, the only
Octogenarian in the home with Latin Pooh bedside.
If I doubted before I knew for certain then
That this branded deep a generation, two or three
Around the prose of Milne.
You read it bedside night by night.
As children we were  lost in a friendship of a bear and boy.

We grew up in the hundred acre woods
And laughed at rotund bear and all his portly ponderings.
Each character mirrors men or women in our world.
You don’t look far before you see the Eeyore’s in your life.
And know those wearing their insecurities as Piglet did,
Poor pig and all his anxiety. Its not so funny after all.

You could write a book of all the metaphors of Pooh and you.
Him and you as child, adult
You and he and a language learned from Milne.
What would you do without your Pooh and maybe even visa versa.
Its as if he knows you too, the friendship runs so deep.

He must have felt your eyes, your hands, your heart
And all the love you dripped on pages in the dark.
And under cover, pages worn down and worn out from love of word.
What if there were no children’s books, after all they speak to all.
What if the books written for the young are really for the grown.

If I could choose I might pick a  pile of the treasures
Of my youth
To hide away and steal away, to bury in the corners of my heart,
While buried under quilt. To read of Charlotte, Wilbur and that
Giving tree, so generous and bare.
And even Dick and Jane, so plain so simple
So austere, life was simpler then.
Life was spelled out so plainly on a page.
There was Dick and there was Jane and that
Is really about all there ever was in 1960
Something, the books of my youth.

But Pooh was front and center in the home
As if he were crowned king.
And were it not for him I may not understand
The deep depression of a soul like Eeyore who
Sees the world, glass half empty every time
Always, never full.
And sweet momma Kanga, her precious mother’s
Heart, so nurturing and loving, so gentle in her ways.
Lost in the woods with Owl and the rest
Learning of life through a boy and his toys.
Of people in a world to come.

Just give me all the children’s books,
And let me read in peace.
Aren’t we all God’s children, after all.
We long to run and play and dream of animals that talk.
And get lost in the woods.
To read of talking spiders whose best friend is a pig.
To bend down low like Alice and talk to cats and hatters.
Why would we ever want to grow old and boring
When bears and honey and owls and donkeys make such wonderful
Companions, for the child in us, the playmates of our youth.

Its cold outside and I am curled up
I feel your warm breath on my neck,
Your smiles, your cadence, reading Pooh aloud.
And of all the places he has been within your life,
Woven through your days
He’ll also earn a place in church one day, far away,
As we say words, holy.
A proper ending to this line that runs throughout your life.
We know you well, we’ll pick the parts of portly Pooh
To read amid the sacred.

And Pooh will live another generation
Along with all the rest.
The children’s books that you loved
Will be loved for days and days to come.
You planted deep a love for Pooh
We honor you with the words of Milne
Every time they are read.
How did he know the smallest things take up
So much room, inside a heart, open wide for love,
A love for bear and books and more
And dear Mother, for you too.

Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your hear.

—A.A. Milne

When The Oh So Ordinary Looks Extraordinary- Day 1

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 8 Comments

Joining The Nester and hundreds of others for a 31 Days of… series. Joyfully reading there and writing here for 31 Days. Would you join me? It would be a gift.

Yesterday I wrote an introduction of sorts for this series. You can read about it here.

Ordinary. Ooh la la ordinary. A new ordinary. Different but same, changed in the blink, because of the eyes.

The eyes of the heart.

In the monday, small case, days and the plain and mundane. There is no such thing.

You turn a monday, small case day on its head and shake it gently until the coins fall from the pockets. And the sparkle is revealed. The something of value is discovered.

Discovered because it sat there all along. Stumbled upon, tripping you up in the wonder of it all. The plain turns to fancy and the ordinary becomes extra so extra-ordinary.

Small is grand and simple is elegant, and the lense turns the world upside down. Its wild and wonderful.

Its an ordinary day in an ordinary life.

The dull becomes bright. The eyes frame the mundane with the frame of wonder and discovery.

And there in the middle of the mundane small case monday, is the height of the unspeakable beautiful.

She walks her monday walk and she breathes her monday air and she turns her monday corner.

And with nothing more than a change in perspective, of measuring the abundant and marking the glass to the line of the full, not half, not whole, but spilling over, she sees her black and white before oz world turned upside down as the colors are thrown on the life canvas.

With reckless abandon.

She sees the ordinary, beautiful.

She hears the ordinary, beautiful.

She comes to see all in the ordinary. Seeing as Alice saw. Wonderful whimsy in the cat and the child and the tea-cup.

A laugh is eeked out. The imagination is sparked.

But it was really there, all along. No imagination is needed. Not really.

The life-art pops and Wonder and Glory are revealed. Just everywhere.

If you look close.

When a dandelion is as a peony or a rose. Beautiful is in the plain.

Simple looks exquisite and marvelously faceted because her lense of love and thanks compounds the what just simply is.

Brown is sepia, dinner is fellowship, a friend, a life-giver in a conversation dipped in grace.

A spider-web is art, a pile of mess is the heart beat of the home.

The weary spirit is we lived with zest in celebration of a marriage.

And the owl and the pussycat take a ring from the nose of a pig. Its grace. It’s all they need.

Well that and honey. And Christopher Robin has bear. And the woods. A friend and a forest seem simply enough.

While a note, a call, a word, a smile carry extravagant small case monday love. Notes of grace, sing a song to the aching broken.

Shine light in the dark shadowy.

Steady a shakey gaping wound. With a word, a whisper.

For you and her and they and we and the ones who walk down-trodden and dejected.

In the black and white, seemingly graceless places of pain. Where you can color it Hope and color it Healed when you speak the words He gave.

She wipes the tear that cleared the way. After the poured out sorrow. And sees the river of joy, wet streams of Living Joy, running rapidly right behind.

And all the burlap, rough brown ragged wrapping of the moments right there,

They shine like silk, soft and beautiful, wrapped around the small case monday,

Through the lense of the not so ordinary after all.

And she continues counting, quietly today, but counting…. the gifts in the ordinary that really are extraordinary.

After all. If you count it all Joy.

linking with Ann and Laura.