One of our children came home from college
and told us a bit of information that
relates to this I want to read.
In biology, somewhere was what's at the back of this poem.
I'd like to read the poem.
And I won't promise.
This is the only one.
I might even read this one again.
It's very short.
It's called Growing Up.
One of my wings beat faster.
I couldn't help it, the one away from the light.
It hurt to be told all the time how I love that terrible flame.
What he told us was that because of some tropism or something,
Mars, on Mars, the wing away from the light
beats faster than the one toward the light.
They don't really like that flame after all.
They just can't help.
But the wing out there in the dark steers them in.
Well, I just want to read my poem one more time.
And I'll hurry up.
Growing Up.
One of my wings beat faster.
I couldn't help it.
The one away from the light.
It hurt to be told all the time how I love that terrible flame.
I see that had written on this one for some reason, where
it was published in the nation.
And these others, and I'm now I feel
I'm speaking, especially to those
of us who are involved in writing and sending things
around.
I'd like to stop for a minute and confess something.
I was glad to have an introduction that
made me sound successful.
Thank you, Lois.
And yeah, that's true.
Yeah, it's pretty true what you said.
But back of all this, of course, for those of us
who are in on it.
We know that a lot of these things
go out and come back like homing pigeons.
I mean, they know the way back.
Here they come.
And I've been trying.
I've been writing for years.
Like getting up early this morning, and most mornings
and writing, and sending things out.
I hadn't thought of saying this.
But I might as well confess maybe about
on the average of maybe 50 poems in the mail
all the time just for the last 15 years or so.
And some of them are almost certain to stick somewhere.
It's just through mistake or shuffling the things excepted.
But even now, after trying for so long, I think about five
out of six things at least to come back each time.
These are even of the things that I think I finished,
that I have some faith in.
And there are an awful lot of others
that are at home and available.
In fact, I have a little notebooks with these copies in.
And they usually say something like forlorn hopes
or lapsed expectations.
So I have many volumes like that.
One of the things that came up last night in that class and I
forgot about this was about I think
this was part of our interchange, something
about syllables.
I want to read it.
Well, I want to say this first.
I have heard students tell me something like this.
Oh, I'm taking old so-and-so literature class.
And it's really dull and boring.
We read those works of literature.
And we analyze every word they say.
And I'm supposed to sympathize, and I
try to keep my face for solidarity with all of us
young people.
But my own feeling is what I found the impulse mind was,
what about the syllables?
I wanted to go farther.