While I was up north with his family for a long weekend, my grandson Scout and I had a very poetry-heavy day. First, he needed to memorize Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” for school, and we decided to take a walk around the neighborhood, during which time we would work on that together. We had only covered two miles, but by the time we got back to the house, he could recite the four stanzas almost perfectly. We had taken quite a bit of our walk to discuss many aspects of the poem’s form and meaning, too, so it seemed like an intensive poetry workshop, the likes of which I’d never participated in before.

Later on, I was made aware of another poetry assignment he needed to complete before the next morning (unlike the first one, which wasn’t due for several days). While his mom was cooking dinner, he and I went into his bedroom so I could help him with that, too, but in a different way — though both projects involved me doing the reading, and for the second one, some scribing, because Scout was dealing with headaches while waiting for new glasses to arrive.

Probably some of you are familiar with the “I Am From” poem by George Ella Lyon, and the way many school children have been encouraged to write their own version after hers, which goes like this:

WHERE I’M FROM

I am from clothespins,
from Clorox and carbon-tetrachloride.
I am from the dirt under the back porch.
(Black, glistening,
it tasted like beets.)
I am from the forsythia bush
the Dutch elm
whose long-gone limbs I remember
as if they were my own.

I’m from fudge and eyeglasses,
          from Imogene and Alafair.
I’m from the know-it-alls
          and the pass-it-ons,
from Perk up! and Pipe down!
I’m from He restoreth my soul
          with a cottonball lamb
          and ten verses I can say myself.

I’m from Artemus and Billie’s Branch,
fried corn and strong coffee.
From the finger my grandfather lost
          to the auger,
the eye my father shut to keep his sight.

Under my bed was a dress box
spilling old pictures,
a sift of lost faces
to drift beneath my dreams.
I am from those moments–
snapped before I budded —
leaf-fall from the family tree.

-George Ella Lyon

Scout had the template which you can see below, to help him arrange his own bits of family history and culture and memories, following the pattern of the original.

I Am From Poem

It was so much fun to work on this together. He had brilliant ideas as to how to capture a few big things that are important to him about the life he has been given, and he understood the need to choose concrete and specific words in order to express concepts and feelings with economy. I kept reading the lines back to him so he could hear how it all sounded together, because you don’t want even a free verse poem to sound clunky.

I was sitting in his desk chair, and Scout was on his bed, surrounded by several of the numerous handmade blankets he has been given from birth onward; it seemed that most of the church friends who welcomed him were quilters, who also gave quilts to his siblings when they arrived; all the children made good use of every one, in their often chilly mountain home in the shade of the forest. I said something to him about including blankets in his poem, at which point he pulled one quilt off the rail of his bunk and commented that it was his very favorite: the quilt that I had made for him!

Some of you will remember when I was working on that. Scout is my ninth grandchild out of eighteen so far, pretty much in the middle of the bunch. For some reason, probably many reasons, he is the only one for whom I’ve made a quilt. And his personal “Where I’m From” poem contains several lines about his growing up in a particular “house in the woods” with “cats on everything,” but the very first line is, “I’m from the quilt my grandmother made….” I found an illustration for that, at right.

All of this stimulating writing work prompted me to share at the table that evening the only poem I have written that I kept. In high school I composed some verses that I lost, or threw away, and it wasn’t until much later in life that I felt obliged to try again, as I explained in this blog post:

Ten or so years ago [that computes to well over 20 years now] our home school was engaging in a poetry study, more focused and meaty than the usual informal enjoyment and memorization. I gave an assignment to the children to write their own “poem of direct address,” and in the spirit of Education is Lifelong and Something You Do to Yourself, I wrote one, too.

Last night my husband and I went to a Music and Poetry Night, and I read my poem, along with others not my own, which were more serious and poetic. I will share those later. But for now, here is my

Ode to a Rice Cake

I can’t resist you, rice cake,
Your crunch and subtle flavor.
I cannot see you in your bag
And say “I’ll eat one later.”

My hands reach out compulsively
And stuff you right on in.
My teeth sink into your crispness;
The crumbs drift down my chin.

Others mock and call you sparse,
They say you’re lean and thin.
I alone will sing your praise
For the feast that you have been.

Fluffy, tasty pockets of air,
Plain yet savory food.
You’re a technological wonder:
Complex, simple, and good.

I still feel the same way about these snacks, which is why I don’t normally keep any in the house. Besides, they make an awful mess, and the cat doesn’t care to eat the crumbles off the floor.

My grandchildren did not appreciate my poem, and sat with blank faces. Because as it turns out, they are deprived, and did not know what a rice cake is! But Pippin likes it, and told me to post it again. She’s a dear daughter.

Scout’s, Lyon’s and Frost’s poems are all connected in my mind now, in their consideration of us as individuals making unique choices, but at the same time rooted in our family relationships and culture; we are happy if we can find as much to be thankful for as Scout did, in those connections. Another image of our common humanity was in the last line of Scout’s own poem, and it makes me think a lot. It’s sort of the opposite of Frost’s “Two roads diverged.” Scout wrote about streams flowing together and traveling to the sea. I’m pretty sure that’s the theme for our next poem.