I am Cherry Alive

Those of you that really know me, know that I love poetry. Somehow my brain just got wired that words are important...and beautiful. Maybe I got it from my parents, maybe my mom read me lots of poetry books as I kid, I have no idea. I love words. I love the images they create. I love the feeling of satisfaction (or ah-ha!) when you find just the right word to convey an idea. I used to think everyone felt this way, but I have learned from my husband that it is not so. Words do not affect him the same way that they affect me.

Elinore seems to have picked up a bit of my poetry love. Maybe she is just at the right age where the sing-song rhythm of children's poetry attracts her. However, sometimes she will ask me to read poems to her. She'll bring over one of our big book of children's poems and we'll sit for half an hour or more just reading bunches of them. It amazes me that she really seems to enjoy them.

All that being said, here is my new favorite poem from one of Elinore's poetry books.
I am Cherry Alive

"I am cherry alive," the little girl sang,
"Each morning I am something new:
I am apple, I am plum, I am just as excited
As the boys who made the Hallowe'en bang:
I am tree, I am cat, I am blossom too:
When I like, if I like, I can be someone new,
Someone very old, a witch in a zoo:
I can be someone else whenever I think who,
And I want to be everything someimes too:
And the peach has a pit and I know that too,
And I put it in along with everything
To make the grown-ups laugh whenever I sing:
And I sing: It is true; It is untrue;
I know, I know, the true is untrue,
The peach has a pit,
The pit has a peach:
And both may be wrong
When I sing my song,
But I don't tell the grown-ups: because it is sad,
And I want them to laugh just like I do
Because they grew up
And forgot what they knew
And they are sure
I will forget it some day too.
They are wrong. They are wrong.
When I sang my song, I knew, I knew!
I am red, I am gold,
I am green, I am blue,
I will always be me,
I will always be new!"

by Delmore Schwartz