Text III
Teaching a child to read
Imagery first: the colors primary
Familiar as the sun; the purpose sure –
To hear, to smell, to feel, to taste, to see.
The mind will enter by another door.
The verb is next: we are the rain that falls,
The frog that sees a cricket as it leaps,
The robin that flaps its wings and calls,
The fish that swims, the animal that creeps.
The third is narrative, the moving spell
Of syntax that ad-libs the myths of time.
Alas, we learn before the wishing well
Has dried how words become a hill to climb.
The fourth is symbol: goodness, beauty, love.
This is the time of quarrel, tears and pain.
Sowing the dragons’ teeth, we bob and weave
Until we bring the simple back again.
By Allen Kanfer. Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/
poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=28478
Glossary: to ad-lib: If you ad-lib something in a play or a speech, you say something
which has not been planned or written beforehand.
(https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/ad-lib)