[lit-ideas] Re: 4 Grandkids
- From: Julie Krueger <juliereneb@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2010 10:51:54 -0500
They do undo us, these children, don't they. Lovely, Mike.
Julie Krueger
On Sat, Apr 24, 2010 at 2:43 AM, Mike Geary
<jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx>wrote:
>
> KIEREN
>
> Amazing how such a simple thing
> as a small child's smile,
> unexpected --
> a response to a jest by you,
> can trumpet love for all humanity --
> this sudden connection,
> this recognition by another
> that you're jesting --
> and yet he so young,
> yes,
> already this grandkid
> has found you out
> and thinks you're grand.
>
>
>
> NIAMH
> During the day,
> when we play,
> Niamh,
> grandchild three
> asks me, please, not to sing.
> Apparently
> she has an ear for music.
> But at night, putting her to sleep
> rubbing her back,
> she wants to hear "Far Away Places"
> and "My Father Always Promised Us."
> even if I don't sound quite like
> John Gary or Judy Collins --
> she's such a Romantic,
> she can fill in the voids.
>
>
>
> PAXTON
> The eldest, now is 6.
> Reticent from the very start,
> ever observant, almost clinical,
> as though she were taking notes.
> I would push her in the stroller
> to the nearby park and talk her ear off
> just to fill the verbal gap,
> I'd whistle bird calls, sing made up songs,
> anything to try to engage her,
> but always I was met with silence.
> I thought she must be a very complacent child
> or else just kindly putting up with me.
> Then my day of silence came,
> bothered by my own life and thinking as we strolled
> how I might turn it all around,
> she turned around and said:
> "Tell me again about when Mama was a little girl."
>
>
>
> HOLDEN
> For two years he clung to his mother,
> clutched his blanket, sucked his passie,
> and then almost, over night he turned into a man.
> "If it moves," his mother always said, "a man will watch it."
> That was Holden.
> If not a man at three, he was on the right track.
> I was startled at how young boys begin turning into guys.
> Where is all this testosterone coming from?
> Surely not those little things.
> But there it is, the sheer joy of body in motion,
> of the mastery of motion --
> and alas, of the near ignorance of emotion.
> Guys, guys, guys -- what of guys?
> God's machines.
>
>
> Mike Geary
> Memphis
>
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