The Logical Poet

It was the poet John Ciardi who once said of children's writing -- "Just as I am ready to conclude that everything in their minds is a non sequitor, it turns out to be its own logic of perception."

Sun, sun, do you know
You are beams in the flames . . .

So said the 7 year-old whose "logic of perception" was simply that you could talk to the sun.

An 11 year-old said,

The clouds are stuck and scared to move
For fear the trees might pinch them.

The logic of perception is that everything is alive and conscious of everything else.

It's a party, said the 4 year-old child of my friend Catya,

The fingers of the sun
Touch the trees
The fingers of the sun touch the leaves
Together they go dancing
Through the breeze.

Does it really matter what age the poet is? This logic of perception is from a Japanese journalist, screenwriter friend of mine (age 40?) who said in this morning's email,

It is a warm hearted
good sad book of honesty
that smells dead rotten mouse of heart a bit.

And from poet Bob Arnold who writes of his son's . . .

5 Year Old Logic On A Winter Night

Under quilts he
says he is too hot

folding down the bed to
a sheet & one blanket

he looks up & says
he is too cold

Yes, you can talk to the sun and read a good rotten mouse heart of a book, and you can be any age, at any time and you can love your life so much that you even love the logic of not being born, and yet be there too.

End Of Story

Looking out at the hillside
Across the river and over the
Trees from our home Carson asks --
Did we climb that mountain?

I say, No, but mommy and I did.

Nodding, he decides, Oh, yeah,
We climbed that before I was born.

The proof is in the pudding and the logic. And the logic states that all things are possible when you believe in them. Go ahead, talk to the moon. She's listening.