Monday's Poem: Antics

Today's poem is one that hangs on my wall (along with 7 others) in a large black frame. I like this poem because it poses a question I often find myself asking . . . I look at people, or read about people, people who were once babies and grew up to be monsters, or who grew up to just be, I don't know, unhappy? And I ask, What happened? What happened in between the time they were innocent and unsuspecting newborns, and now? And I answer my own question with The World. Life. But the generality of that answer leaves me yet unsatisfied and leads me to the even more general and unsatisfying questions of what, beyond nature and nurture, makes you you and me me. What about your nature and nurture makes you you? And even though I don't expect answers to these questions, I ask them nonetheless. Such is me, for better or worse.

The poem is by Cid Corman.

Antics

Kids are strange

and special.

One jeers and

another

sneers or stares

or fearful

scoots away.

What gets in

to any

one to be

what he or

she is? The

stone kicked so

far is left

finally

alone and

looks much as

it did when

it started--

though no one

now much cares.