My Son's Poetry

My Son’s Poetry

I liked to write poetry when I was my son’s age, but his imagination and the pictures he draws with words are better. He has agreed to let me share some of it. I put in two of his and two of mine from 1974. See if you can determine which is which.

 Lunar Lullaby

I am the one that calms the seas

I am the eyes that see you sleep

When listening to the breeze

Making music with the leaves

I smile at you in the night

With stars I set the sky alight

Through any weather I’ll shine my best

Until the sunshine lets me rest 

 

Garden Delight

A patch of ground to build upon

Stirred and cut in even row.

The bearer of life many sizes, shapes

Buried alive by hand and hoe.

The newborn leave their cradle

Steadily reaching for the sun,

Though often beset by foe.

Through storms and drought

They still bend not low,

But yield nature’s harvest

Fruit, that man may grow.

The Beetle

The sweetest song comes when the stars abound

And the insects of the kingdom anticipate the sound

A violinist beetle plays through the night

When his firefly cousins deliver their light

He sits on a dew-soaked stem alone

Beneath the moonlight it becomes his throne

He plays a tune that would make songbirds cry

And creates new life under the darkened sky

His instrument bids the other beetles to sing along

And the moths and spiders work in sync with his song

On top of his stem, his heart writes symphonies sublime

Some dark as the sky above and others the stars that shine

Winter

Season winter, vain, hard, precise,

Decrees herself queen over snow, over ice.

Occasionally gentle as her rival spring,

Usually shrewish; coldly she flings

Her mantle of lace, each thread unique,

Over the earth, valley, and peak.

Silver sequins she dresses each tree,

Blown by the wind, exulting and free.