March Winds Blow and Memories of Childhood Intrude
Although many say that April is the cruelest month, to me it has always been March. I don’t know why, never really thought about it much but the transition from winter to spring has always been difficult for me. Tim has reminded me periodically that it has been a long, long time since I posted here, but until today I haven’t been able to overcome inertia. And then, when I do overcome it, it isn’t with one of the many things that I have bottled up in me just waiting to break free, but instead Robert Louis Stevenson and A Child’s Garden of Verse seems so very important today.
When I was seven I was very ill for most of the winter, and my grandmother bought me a Golden Book edition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verse. She told me that Stevenson had been very ill as a child with tuberculosis and had begun to act out many of the stories he wrote later as an adult. Never cared enough to make sure that the story my grandmother told me was true because I liked it and it fit my purposes that winter.
But when I went to look for some of my favorite poems on line, I realized that it was very appropriate to think of this book of poems in March. Two of my favorite poems The Wind and Bed in Summer explain ever so better than me. Isn’t poetry grand?