The Sunday Poem: At Age 6

Sometimes he spent hours
Pulling the thin ribbons of wild chives
From the clasp of earth,
And holding them in front of his face.
Each green vein wandered its traced line
From bulb to tapered tip, until
He brushed the dirt off and bit
The stalk in half, leaving frayed ends
Brushing his lips with sting.

There he’d lay, under the lilac
Bushes that grew tortuous like shadow-figure fingers –
I don’t remember what he saw
In the wild chives hidden in the lilacs
But who can blame him if at that moment
The world was bounded by his body
And even the paths of light down spicy veins
Were open to his understanding.

He stayed for some hours more, hunting
Raspberries, but by then the damage was done.

This was originally also one of the “genius poems” (cf “The Imaginary Playmate Speaks” and “How to Be a Genius”). Unlike the humor and sarcasm of the others, though, this one came out with a certain wistfulness for an experience I think most of us share from when we were children: that sense of wonder moment where we think we can understand everything and anything, and the world is full of mysteries that we think we can tease out. It’s almost like a moment of being awake, when the rest of our lives we are asleep.

Most of us, I think, go back to sleep, and revisit that moment from time to time. That, perhaps, makes everyone a genius.