Poetry

Hope is a thing with feathers

That perches in the soul

And sings the tune

Without the words,

And never stops at all. - Emily Dickenson

I like to teach my children poetry.  For in a few lines, guideposts can be given and learned.  No lectures needed.  No long discussions.  Just simple words that can inspire and be easily recalled and remembered. 
I can not pull the bumps out of the way for my children.  I can just give them a road map...and say don't worry...we all sometimes hit the pot holes in the road.  You will make it through.

Here are a few favourites:
If by Rudyard Kipling
Invictus by W.E. Henley
O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman
Magic by Shel Silverstein
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

The Pasture

 I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wa't to watch the water clear, I may)
I sha'n't be gone long. - You come too.

I'm going out to fetch the little calf

That's standing by the mother.  It is so young

It totters when she licks it with her tongue.

I sha'n't be gone long. - You may come too.

-Robert Frost

an old animal pasture beside our home

When my grandmother passed away a few years ago, as a memory I took a book of poems off her shelf.  The opening poem was "The Pasture" by Robert Frost.  I thought it was a beautiful poem...but I didn't quite get it.  I happened upon the poem about a month ago, and still I didn't quite get it.  But today, I finally really got it.  I did not intentionally seek to understand this poem. It just sort of happened...

a little hummingbird nest

This morning, instead of doing what needed to be done...we pushed it aside and went on a walk through our own fields and pastures.

We spied so many wonderful little things  along the way...and took our time....

snow shaped by wind...(what do you think it looks like...I think a dragon with wings)

beaver cuttings...some people have squirrels...we have beaver in our backyard...

When  we made it back home, by chance, I happened to pick up that old book of poems...and I opened it to "The Pasture"...and this time...I got it.  

I don't know how I had missed it before. I guess I just had to sweep a few of my own leaves away     first...Did you get it, too?