The Silver Sage
Are you ready? Come on along and read some homespun poetry as well as a jot and tittle regarding distinguished poets and their works. Gael offers a positive balance of her own nostalgia notes and poetic meanderings with those of others. [Editor's note: Gael no longer contributes to Silver Planet, but we have made her archived blog entries available as a service to our readers.]
My Shadow
As I started writing this post, a black forest squirrel raced across the deck, looking very much like he was chasing his shadow into the brilliant sunshine. We don’t pay much attention to our shadows as we get older, but to a child, and perhaps a squirrel, fleeing shadows are a grand curiosity.
I confess to feeling nostalgic. Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem “My Shadow” has shaken from the cobweb-covered part of my brain that lies rife with childhood memories, and is running through my head like a squirrel. Poems memorized when I was very young escape occasionally—and aren’t easily put back. So much so, that “My Shadow” inspired me to dig out and reread A Child’s Garden of Verses—65 cherished Stevenson classics. (Trivia note: it was first published as Penny Whistles in 1885.)
As I turned the pages, I became a little girl again, sick in bed with measles, hearing my mother read “The Land of Counterpane” and “The Land of Nod.” I loved how quickly the words came back to me, proving I still have grey matter.
Stevenson wrote several poems about shadows. A particularly poignant short verse called “Shadow March” seems very adult to me. Think about being alone in your house on a windy night, hearing the creaking boards and . . .
All around the house is the jet-black night;
It stares through the window-pane;
It crawls in the corners, hiding from the light,
Uh, goosebumps, anyone?
As an only child, my playground was a lonely dirt road, and I loved the Stevenson poem “The Unseen Playmate.” I created an unseen friend named Jinxy, who filled the playmate role well.
Although I love the poems of childhood, my grandchildren seem only to chat about the video games they play. They are thousands of miles away and cannot sit next to me and hear the poems I would enjoy reading to them. Somehow I don’t think a video game revisited 60 years hence will produce the happiness that strolling through A Child’s Garden of Verses would. Great as it is, a Kindle electronic book reader doesn’t have the smell, feel, and texture of a wonderful old book either—especially one that has colorful crayon swirls of the letter G on the back inside cover.
When I go for a walk later today, I will watch for my shadow accompanying me—or perhaps she is leading me . . . ?
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My Shadow
(Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850-1894)
I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow— He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play, One morning, very early, before the sun was up, |
By Gael Stuart
The Silver Sage Blog
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