Tuesday's poem - 9/1/09

It's been a busy week & weekend. I'm cruising on fumes but that's to be expected. The weekend was full and classes started this week. Our kid activities have started up in full force (I need to sew Cub Scout patches - yikes!) and my feet are trying to get used to wearing shoes that are not flip flops. I love starting new classes but my voice is getting tired. We are not allowed to have water in our classrooms anymore (what?!?). Apparently, it's never been allowed. I thought only other beverages were no-nos, but the syllabus clearly states No Food or Beverages Allowed in the Classroom and it applies to instructors and students. My options are, perhaps, to wear a camel-pak (that would look dumb) or chew gum (also, dumb). I can't go for an hour+ teaching without some kind of drink.

... that didn't sound quite right.

On to Tuesday's poem.

I hope it doesn't seem like I'm *coasting* in my third week into this poem feature but I've chosen a poem that I first loved decades ago. That's not coasting.... it's remembering.


I loved to pull out my mom's yellow copy of The Prophet by Khalil Gibran and read through it, even when I was in junior high and high school. (My parents' room had the neatest wall to wall bookshelf ... I wish I had one like it ... and I loved to skim the titles!) This collection of prose poems was published in 1923, and the dust jacket is actually, famously yellow. My parents' copy wasn't unusually aged or anything.

Gibran was a Lebanese-American writer and artist. He wrote and illustrated this collection, for example. The Prophet is a slim volume but very deep. The book's concept is a prophet is on a hillside to whom the people come, asking about a variety of subjects. (The poem "On Love, "from the same book, was read at my wedding reception. I have always had a soft spot for this book and its poems.)

I've been thinking about this poem, particularly the first line of the second stanza, because my son teaches me this principle on a regular basis. I see many of my traits in him but he truly is his own person, a person who said, "Mom, if only I had a gameboy, I could just turn it on as soon as I got in the car and play and play. I wouldn't even have to wait until I got home. I could take it everywhere I went."

uuuuuuuuuuuuu (sound of my heart sinking)

"What about reading, buddy?" I ask.
"Well, I don't think I'm much of a reader, Mom. I'm more into video games."

'What are you, a poster child for the early 21st century kid movement?!?' I want to say to him. (I'm actually considering a deal whereby he 'earns' the privilege of me considering the purchase of a Wii system if he reads a certain number of chapter books, an enormous number, really, and does his homework uncomplainingly for multiple months. Another post indeed.)

But complaining aside, I also see this principle in his love for carnivorous plants, for bugs of every kind.

I try regularly to be the bow.

Also, I should note, this poem might make you cry. I get choked up when I read it. I think it is painful to consider that life does not tarry. I want it to tarry. But even more, I want to be for gladness.

My mother and father were the bows that sent us forth. I'm glad I had wise parents.

On Children

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.