My three-year-old son's current favorite poem,
which is very different.
He loves the moon.
This is a poem called "Moon Folly."
It was written in 1913 by an American woman poet--
Fanny Stearns Davis, who's not very well known now.
But I found this poem in a book that an 80-year-old friend
of mine gave to us when I had my son,
and it was her first beloved book of poems and is now
my son's.
"I will go up the mountain after the moon.
She is caught in a dead fir tree.
Like a great pale apple of silver and pearl,
like a great pale apple is she.
I will leave and will catch her with quick, cold hands,
and carry her home in my sack.
And set her down safe on the oaken bench
to stand by the chimney-back.
And, then, I will sit by the fire all night.
I will sit by the fire all day.
And I will gnaw at the moon to my heart's delight
till I gnaw her slowly away.
And while I grow mad with the moon's cold taste,
the world will beat at my door, crying, 'come out,' and crying,
'make haste, and give us the moon once more.'
But I shall not answer them ever at all.
I shall laugh as I count and hide
the great black beautiful seeds of the moon in a flower
pot deep and wide.
Then I shall lie down and go fast asleep,
drunken with flame and swoon.
But the seeds will sprout, and the seed will leap--
the subtle swift seeds of the moon.
And some day, all of the world that cries and beats at my door
shall see, 1,000 moon-leaves spring
from my thatch on a wonderful white moon-tree.
Then each shall have moons to his heart's desire--
apples of silver and pearl, apples
of orange and copper fire setting his five wits aswirl.
And then they will thank me who mock me now--
'oh, wanting the moon is he.'
Though I'm off to the mountain after the moon ere
she falls from the dead fir tree."
[APPLAUSE]