Tuesday, August 30, 2011

I miss my grown up reading time - bedtime stories with a two year old is a wonderful, blessed delight-and because my brain feels like jello and I am too tired to wake to big words and consuming thoughts - there is a lot to be found in good stories for babies. Tonight we started with Noah's ark and ended with The Very Hungry Catepillar.  C. did not care for the story of Ping, cried through some of Where the Wild Things Are when he figured out bedtime does mean bedtime, and settled in as I read a full third of the Richard Scary Copendium. Lessons learned...God blesses obedience...it is fun to eat your way through from catepillar to butterfly (who doesn't like chocolate cake, pie and ice cream in the very same day...and good friends often surprise you, even when you think you know it all.
Later this evening when following a trail of internet poetry, I remembered I do so miss poetry.  I opened my collection from Richard Wilbur - skipped and flipped around landing on a dog tagged page...

MIND
Mind in its purest play is like some bat
That beats about in caverns all alone,
Contriving by a kind of senseless wit
Not to conclude against a wall of stone.

It has no need to falter or explore;
Darkly it knows what obstacles are there,
And so may weave and flitter, dip and soar
In perfect courses through the blackest air.

And has this simile a like perfection?
The mind is like a bat. Precisely. Save
That in the very happiest intellection
A graceful error may correct the cave.

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