POEM DAY BLOG: Little hands Learning

It's a rainy day in Memphis so I'm out at the coffeeroom people-watching and reading. A lady came in with her two little ones and sat adjacent to me. She held her little boy in one arm as she ate her breakfast. Another child, her daughter, scribbled on a notepad in her own chair nearby.

The little boy in her arm, head of bewildering curls, was twirling his hand in the air.  It made me think that he was simply exploring the movements of his own wrist and fingers. He was probably two or three years old, so too young to know what he was doing. But he was learning, exploring without being taught. 

I wrote this poem in a blank space of Seamus Heaney's book "Seeing Things".  Something I'm thinking about is translating the child's ability of sight and discovery into the adult faculties. I long to recover that in myself, the free untaught learning of discovery. Ironically, I have to learn how to do that again! One of my favorite ways is to practice funny faces in front of the mirror, or like my wife and I did recently - practice talking in British accents on an evening walk around our neighborhood, or just simply to pay close attention to almost anything other than my self - so that my self is shaped and enlarged by Revealed beauty instead of my self shaping everything else within its tiny circumference. 

Here's the poem I wrote for this mother and her children. I was able to stop at her table and read it to her which was fun. 

Little Hands Learning 

Young hands by their ancient design

twirl in exploration of their own

life in every new place. 

The mother holds with one arm

her little one, swaying, buoyant -

all windings and reach. The dance

of unlearned life always learning.