Looking Up

July 10 2011

I am watching a small child.

Who walks

as if his legs are too short,

as if his over-sized head

will topple him.

Whose sturdy body

and squat neck

give him that bulldog look

   —  Churchill, without the cigar.

He seems dreamy, distractible.

Which is hardly unexpected,

because kids wander

while adults pay attention.

Except

it’s very much the opposite.

We are focused

bulldogs on our bones,

while kids don’t miss a thing

  —  what we learn not to see

in our keyhole vision.

His business is different,

when everything is a first

and of equal concern.

Perfect

peripheral vision.

I have climbed

the kite-eating tree,

jiggling branches, rustling leaves.

He is wide-eyed, passing underneath,

mother’s hand, almost dragging him

looking up, entranced.

No one thinks to look up

at trees.

An old man on the bus

asleep.

A ragged line of ants

picking the sandbox clean.

At the tender age of 5

he is a master of Zen,

living mindfully, in the moment,

unconcerned

with ends and means.

He will spend a lifetime

becoming this enlightened

again.

When he is old and grey

sitting on this bench, in the shade

of the same ancient tree.

Observing children at play

feeding skittish squirrels.

An old man

with all the time in the world.

I heard an interview with the developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik about her recent book, The Philosophical Baby. In it, she explores learning in young children, and how we underestimate their learning and perception. In her brilliant analogy, she talks about babies being the Research and Development branch of the human concern; while we adults are Production and Marketing. It’s this quality of lateral thinking, of unprejudiced observation in children, that I wanted to illuminate in this poem . Basically, I wanted to steal her simile! So this poem was an effort to show the same thing ….without saying it, of course!