When I Was Small

Yesterday, I told you about my childhood friends, Nelson and Doris, and I linked you to a photo and poem that Doris was honoured to have published online. Of course, I became greedy and requested that she send me a photo-poem to specifically publish on my blog. She complied promptly by sending me "When I Was Small", and the photo of a small damsel fly.

In her own words: Not having moved away from the area I grew up in, I have the opportunity to practically retrace my childhood wanderings. Although much has changed and once untouched fields are now parking lots and shopping malls, I still can find grassy areas where I walked as a child. One time while walking, I came to wonder whether the thoughts I have now (forty some odd years later) are any wiser than those I had as a child. It is with that in mind that I wrote the poem.

Thank you Doris.

 

WHEN I WAS SMALL

 

When I was small and just a child

I wandered 'long these grassy trails -

Observed the milkweed and mullein

And saw life's tiniest details.

 

It seemed that then the plants and I

Were almost equal in our size -

And this afforded me a view

Of monarch eggs and damsel flies.

 

And now so many years have passed

Since once I wandered through this grass.

 

My height is more a hindrance now

And eyes - less keen - preclude the sight

Of all the tiny precious life

That once provided great delight.

 

When eyes and mind are of a child,

They are more kindly blessed

Than present eyes - set high but dulled -

And mind worn down by stress.

 

Have years made wise the thoughts that pass

As now I wander through this grass?

 

Can not as deep a truth be known

From contemplation of a stone

At a mountain's base

 

Than from ascending t'wards the sky

To such exalted view on high

Of grandeur and of space?