Reflections

No poem to post this time, just a little reflection on me and my relationship to poetry. I'm not really a poetry lover. I like rhyming, alliteration, and wordplay. I like the way that the sound of words and their ideas echo in my mind.

I'm also very bad at memorization. I can remember only bits and pieces of a few poems from my 'childhood' that are not jiggles for some product or the other (Oscar Meyer weiners, Frito's, et cetera)

Some of the few pieces of actual poetry I do recall are:

The first stanza of Paul Revere's Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

Another poem I can remember is an epitaph from an article about amusing epitaphs in Argosy magazine (I think, but I could easily be wrong about the magazine) around 1968 (maybe). I don't know why, but this one poem seems to be etched into my brain.

Under the sod,
under the trees,
here lies the body of Jonathan Pease.
He is not here, but only his pod.
He has shelled his peas,
and gone to God.

And, of course:
Remember, remember, the 5th of November
The Gunpowder Treason and plot;
I know of no reason why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.

There are other bits and pieces that come and go as I am reminded of them.