Excessive Humility, Excessive Pride

November Poem a Day Challenge: Day 12

"What am I now that I was then?”             
 [Delmore Schwartz]

It is impossible to gather the wisdom of childhood.
It is supplanted by knowledge & worry & growth,
but the wonder in it is irreplaceable, inimitable,
& all we seek through the following years is its insight.

The traces remain & are visible in offspring’s offerings:

looks, cries, features, & fears trigger memories

the way wind shakes trees sending the leaves into

familiar scatterings to be made into piles for deliverance.

Listen, sons, hold on to it as long as you can,

fight the urge to grow up to the plans we’ll inevitably make,

learn how to laugh like you do now when the world suggests resignation,

hold on to the wonder in the tiniest things when everything urges bigger, biggest, best.

You are not only the future, of which I am proud,

You are the perfect now, the acme of potential that humbles me with every smile.