Back to Poems & Pictures Page

Pictures & Poems--
Glimpses of Childhood



Emily Dickinson



Yevgeny Yevtushenko



William Butler Yeats



John Updike



Rainer Maria Rilke



Gwendolyn Brooks





Charles

Life for My Child is Simple

Life for my child is simple, and is good.
He knows his wish. Yes, but that is not all,
Because I know mine too.
And we both want joy of undeep and unabiding things,
Like kicking over a chair or throwing blocks out of a window
Or tipping over an ice box pan
Or snatching down curtains or fingering an electric outlet
Or a journey or a friend or an illegal kiss.
No. There is more to it than that.
It is that he has never been afraid.
Rather, he reaches out and lo the chair falls with a beautiful
crash,
And the blocks fall down on the people's heads,
And the water comes slooshing sloppily out across the floor
And so forth.
Not that success, for him, is sure, infallible.
But never has he been afraid to reach.
His lesions are legion.
But reaching is his rule.

Gwendolyn Brooks
       
Sara Booth



Mary Oliver



William Blake



e. e. cummings



Thom Gunn
 

Poems & Pictures Homepage
top
Bette Home Page