Children Grow Up-and Change-Another Goodbye

Hurrah, it's Poetry Friday.  You can find all 

the good poets and words about poetry with Diane at Random Noodling.  Thanks Diane!

 I’ve been creating poems for a personal project that speaks of different ways of looking at children (mine, others, and grandchildren, too) growing up.  It is a series of poems at different stages in a life, essentially saying goodbye each time.  I hope to put them together in a book with pictures of my grandchildren (now 10 ½, 3, and almost 9 months) and children at the particular stage I am describing in the poem.  Part of this comes from my talks with my daughter, about pregnancy, the children growing and changing so fast.  Another part is that I love telling stories through poetry, and I love poems of goodbye, so I thought this would be a good way to combine both passions.  Go to a link to find the four previous poems:  here, here, here and here. This is poem number five.

(5)

Today, I watched you roll the hula hoop

all across the park, whooping at

your prowess.  It was going

and going,

like the years behind you,

away and around and away!

We used to stand ten feet apart

and I would say, Put your hands out,

Ready? then I’d pitch the ball.

Now, you throw the football,

spiraling straight to the target, me,

a real football that demands 

I wear my garden gloves. 

You catch it every time,

without me asking, Ready?

You still tell

me what’s going on

with friends

and enemies. 

You say, What do you think, Grandma?

I think the years

behind you, every one

leave me joy-filled,

seeing the pictures in my mind

of times we’ve spent

together.

There was Candyland and Old Maid,

on to Ruckus and Trash,

now long games of Monopoly

where I still try not to win

every time. 

I’ve already won,

because I have you.

And-Remember to check on the Poetry Tag Group shown at the right!  And find Jama Rattigan's blog post at Jama's Alphabet Soup  to discover so many Poetry sites in the kidlitosphere doing wonderful things!  Cathy, at Merely Day By Day, is joining Mary Lee, at A Year of Reading in a poem a day this month. Other daily poem writers include Amy at The Poem Farm, and Donna at Mainely Write.  Plus Greg Pincus of Gotta Book has just published his first E-book, The Late Bird.  Now he's celebrating by giving one, or more, away.  See the blog that tells all about it  here