letters from a young poet...

i've lived in this apartment since march and i still have yet to make use of my wallspace, so lately i've been on a quest to find things that might look nice framed or mounted or whathaveyou.

i just went through a box that was full of old journals and i found some things that i had forgotten i had, mostly of the keep-this-because-it's-from-mom variety, including a mother's day card i made on behalf of my brother and me in 1982 (i was 5, my brother was 1), a copy of the program from my parents' wedding, and an invitation to my parents' wedding.

my mom and dad, being the good hippies that they were, made their own invitations. my mother had beautiful handwriting, and wrote on the cover of the invite a rilke quote:

"do you not see how everything that happens keeps on being a beginning?
and how could it not be His beginning since beginning is always in itself so beautiful?"

i also found a poem that i wrote as a child for a class project in poetry. i have no recollection whatsoever of having written this, but it might just be the greatest thing i've ever written, so i'm including it in this blog post, for old time's sake:

catch the sea?
oh no - not me!
it's too blue, too deep
i like to walk beside it
the waves hugging my feet
but as far as getting in --
did you see that fin!
no telling what's out there!!
besides,
it messes my hair.
it's safer on the shore
i can snore away the sun
and steam 'til i'm done
and can't feel any more.

but,
in the sea
you have to kick and to bend and to swim
with your blood rolling in you have to brave slime
and stumps and curling blue blumps that crash into your chin
when i get in the sea
the sea gets in me
it crawls in my hears and puckers my tongue
it makes my nose run!!
no!
i don't want to know the sea
i'm afraid
it would know me.