I have been reading David Wagoner, my poetry teacher from UW. His new book of poems, Good Morning and Good Night is full of wonder. Many of the poems are about childhood experiences, either his or those of his children, but looking through the eyes of a child really allows for seeing things differently than the usual. He takes a situation out of the common and makes it uncommon.

"The Message"
David Wagoner

Something was in the sky. It was even bigger
Than our house and painted gray, and people were running
Along our alley to see it and pointing at it,
And all our neighbors were int their yards like me,
And the firemen had all come running our of their station,
And all the teachers and children at the school
Were our as if for recess, and it was flying
Lower and lower over the hospital,
And the sick people and nurses with white hats
Were standing out on the lawn. It was so big,
I couldn't understand how it could float
and turn around and come still lower and closer,
And there was a man in the cabin under it
Who was leaning out of a window, waving at me,
And my father was beside me, waving back,
And knew the man's name, He hadn't always been
Up there. He'd gone to work where my father went
Almost every moring. Suddenly something
Was falling and glittereing like peices of tinfoil,
And one was white and quicker. It fell on our grass.
I picked it up and opened the crumpled paper
From around a stone. My father could read it
And even I could read it. It said my name.
- posted by jennifer joy staab @ 10:08 AM