As you sit by the crib reading this book
aloud to the child, awake or asleep,
look upon this life as Wordsworth would look:
a soul before birth with knowledge so deep
the Great Spirit chose to wipe memory
of heaven away, except for some sense
of “trailing clouds of glory.” Poetry,
Wordsworth would say, is the child’s renaissance:
rhythms aligned with the mother’s heartbeat
starting the process of learning again
the soul’s purpose. Poems tend to complete
this role through rhyme and images like rain,
sun, tree, wind—sound and sight forming a view
of nature and time, and love for what’s true.
Roger Armbrust
2002
