A Non-Poem About Poems

    When I told a dear friend I was heading out to NYC for a couple days with my daughter, she said, "be sure to write a poem about it!" Well, I can write for days and days, but a poem it will not be. This writer knows how to rhyme, knows how to join long strings of words but poetry is so far beyond me that the thought makes me go pale.
    My two-and-a-half-year-old grandson knows some poems that I have recited to him since shortly after his birth. Three poems by Robert Louis Stevenson I have committed to memory have become "Po" to him - what he called them when he was just starting to speak. They are the whisperings of a Grammy to her little man when the bedtime books have been read and he's still not drowsy enough for sleep. They are the stories that he has memorized and can correct me when I misplace a word. They feel antiquated in the contemporary time of touch screens and drones and social media, but he loves hearing about the anachronistic worlds of backgarden swings, grazing cows and a little boy's persistent shadow. He listens intently, considers the lilt of my words and finishes most sentences, further cementing the prowess of his memory.
    Grammy recites Po the way the warbler whistles his tune - deliberately, precisely, and with rising and falling tones. If anyone else were to read them, would they remember to add that pause, the half-gasp of surprise, the slight whisper at the resolute end? Little man will someday commit things to memory. I know this because I was 8 years old when I first read "The Swing" by RLS and decided to memorize it. What made me do it, I cannot recall, but I have never regretted the time I spent to learn it by heart. It isn't a marketable skill, it won't win me any friends or even social accolades, and it is probably only impressive to a little guy who thinks the only good stories live inside of books. But to have a tiny and tidy story that is exactly the same every time is a valuable thing. You never know when a kid will need a small story to while away the time, or to get the eyelids drooping and there's not a book in sight.
    Poems written for children are a lost art in the literary world. They are reminiscent of 19th century England, or colonial Ceylon. Perhaps poets these days don't think children worthy of rhyming verse and stanzas. I can tell you that rhyming prose is a natural for kids who are starting to read. It naturally aids the memory to have a mnemonic twin at the end of every sentence. It is true that poetry need not always rhyme, but sometimes, the rhymes the thing. Where there's a rhyme there's a reason. And a rhyme in time saves nine.
    When my little man cuddles into my lap, for those precious minutes when I can smell the freshly-washed scent of his hair, feel his soft hands reaching out to hold mine, then I feel him relax as I step into the first stanza of "A Friendly Cow" while he hugs his stuffed animal friend Cow. The busyness of the day, the challenges and accomplishments become distant memories as we both breathe deeply and allow our eyes to close just a little.