First, I listened, twining hair about my hand, perhaps sucking on my thumb, my legs stuck out straight in front of me, my head resting in the crook of my mother’s arm. Then I pored over the pictures, turning pages slowly, matching up images on each leaf with the images the words raised in my mind. There, Georgie Porgie with the weeping girls running from him, and there a cow jumping over the moon. I learned the ways of rhyme and tone, I sang them back with a singsong voice, repeating them until they were a part of me.<\/p>\n
The rhymes and the rhythms are memory aids, cementing the poems and the ditties in place. Even now, I can recite without blinking scores of metered verse and childhood favorites. Simple Simon met a pieman. With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes. One shoe off and one shoe on. Animal crackers and cocoa to drink. Over in the meadow in the sand in the sun. There was a little girl who had a little curl. Sir Brian had a battleaxe with great big knobs on. Cinderella dressed in yella. One fish two fish red fish blue fish.<\/p>\n
I think it’s a shame that as we grow, the doggerel of simpler days becomes something most adults consider beneath them, too easy, too pat, something for children. Simple rhymes may be just that: simple, but there is a complexity in many rhyming poems that sometimes seems effortless and belies the hours of hard work and thought that went into them. There’s a joy in rhyming poems that is too often lacking in the more serious fare we enjoy when we’re grown.<\/p>\n
What’s your favorite rhyming poem from childhood? Here is one of mine:<\/p>\n
Cadence<\/b>
\nby Margaret Wise Brown<\/p>\n
There is music I have heard
\nSharper than the song of bird
\nSweeter still while still unheard
\nThere beyond the inner ear.
\nSofter than the sounds I hear
\nSofter than the ocean’s swell
\nIn the caverns of a shell,
\nTinier than cutting wings
\nOf flying birds and little things,
\nLike a cat’s paw in the night
\nOr a rabbit’s frozen fright.
\nThis is the music I have heard
\nIn the cadence of the word
\nNot spoken yet
\nAnd not yet heard.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
More great poems and poetry can be found<\/b>: Poetry Thursday<\/a><\/p>\n Really Great Writing Out There Right Now<\/b>: For a Song<\/a><\/p>\n