This week, my brother told me that he is officially “Talking To A Girl.” This is not to say that he has never talked to a girl before, but this is the Official Talking where he grins a lot, and willingly converses with me for a half hour or so and sends me two or three emails in a week. This might not sound huge to you, but he’s generally a man of far fewer words.

The little twerp who used to be part Howler monkey and run around shrieking, using my body as a springboard and jumping off of things has now rounded a corner on the way to — whatever else is next. Because he honestly couldn’t tell you. I say, “So, cool, talking. What’s after Talking?”

“I don’t know!”
“Well, who decides what’s next?”
“I don’t know.”

Um, yeah. Can’t help you there, dude.

The poem I chose today is a paean to earlier days and the urge to madness that still exists within my “little” brother – and in all of us. Hope you find time to run ’til you drop.

Play hard, kids.

Animal Spirits

When I was five and

undifferentiated energy, animal spirits,

pent-up desire for the unknown built in me

a head of steam I had

no other way to let off, I ran

at top speed back and forth

end to end of the drawingroom,

bay to French window, shouting–

roaring, really–slamming

deliberately into the rosewood

desk at one end, the shaken

window-frames at the other, till the fit

wore out or some grownup stopped me.

But when I was six I found better means:

on its merry gallows

of dark-green wood my swing, new-built,

awaited my pleasure, I rushed

out to it, pulled the seat

all the way back to get a good start, and

vigorously pumped it up to the highest arc:

my legs were oars, I was rowing a boat in air–

and then, then from the furthest

forward swing of the ropes

I let go and flew!
At large in the unsustaining air,

flew clear over the lawn across

the breadth of the garden

and fell, Icarian, dazed,

among hollyhocks, snapdragons, love-in-a-mist,

and stood up uninjured, ready

to swing and fly over and over.

The need passed as I grew;

the mind took over, devising

paths for that force in me, and the body curled up,

sedentary, glad to be quiet and read and read,

save once in a while, when it demanded

to leap about or to whirl–or later still

to walk swiftly in wind and rain

long and far and into the dusk,

wanting some absolute, some exhaustion.

– by Denise Levertov, from This Great Unknowing: Last Poems. New York: New Directions Books © 1999.
Do NOT miss the new Nye poems at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, and Kelly’s darling original piece to Kid2’s first grade teacher — I hope Mrs. O gets to read this one. The Poetry People are at Wild Rose Reader, hosted by Elaine.