We Interrupt This Packing To Say: POETRY FRIDAY

This week, my brother told me that he is officially "Talking To A Girl." This is not to say that he has never talked to a girl before, but this is the Official Talking where he grins a lot, and willingly converses with me for a half hour or so and sends me two or three emails in a week. This might not sound huge to you, but he's generally a man of far fewer words.

The little twerp who used to be part Howler monkey and run around shrieking, using my body as a springboard and jumping off of things has now rounded a corner on the way to -- whatever else is next. Because he honestly couldn't tell you. I say, "So, cool, talking. What's after Talking?"

"I don't know!"
"Well, who decides what's next?"
"I don't know."

Um, yeah. Can't help you there, dude.

The poem I chose today is a paean to earlier days and the urge to madness that still exists within my "little" brother - and in all of us. Hope you find time to run 'til you drop.

Play hard, kids.

Animal Spirits

When I was five and

undifferentiated energy, animal spirits,

pent-up desire for the unknown built in me


a head of steam I had

no other way to let off, I ran

at top speed back and forth

end to end of the drawingroom,

bay to French window, shouting--

roaring, really--slamming

deliberately into the rosewood

desk at one end, the shaken

window-frames at the other, till the fit


wore out or some grownup stopped me.

But when I was six I found better means:

on its merry gallows

of dark-green wood my swing, new-built,

awaited my pleasure, I rushed

out to it, pulled the seat

all the way back to get a good start, and

vigorously pumped it up to the highest arc:


my legs were oars, I was rowing a boat in air--

and then, then from the furthest

forward swing of the ropes

I let go and flew!

At large in the unsustaining air,

flew clear over the lawn across

the breadth of the garden

and fell, Icarian, dazed,

among hollyhocks, snapdragons, love-in-a-mist,


and stood up uninjured, ready

to swing and fly over and over.

The need passed as I grew;

the mind took over, devising

paths for that force in me, and the body curled up,

sedentary, glad to be quiet and read and read,

save once in a while, when it demanded

to leap about or to whirl--or later still


to walk swiftly in wind and rain

long and far and into the dusk,

wanting some absolute, some exhaustion.

- by Denise Levertov, from This Great Unknowing: Last Poems. New York: New Directions Books © 1999.

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Do NOT miss the new Nye poems at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, and Kelly's darling original piece to Kid2's first grade teacher -- I hope Mrs. O gets to read this one. The Poetry People are at Wild Rose Reader, hosted by Elaine.