POETRY FRIDAY: Forgotten Planet

I miss the days when my daughter was little. It was fun revisiting my own childhood with her…looking at the world anew through her eyes…finding surprises in the simplest things. This poem reminded me of that.

Forgotten Planet
By Doug Dorph

I ask my daughter to name the planets.

"Venus ...Mars ...and Plunis!" she says.

When I was six or seven my father

woke me in the middle of the night.

We went down to the playground and lay

on our backs on the concrete looking up

for the meteors the tv said would shower.

I don't remember any meteors. I remember

my back pressed to the planet Earth,

my father's bulk like gravity next to me,

the occasional rumble from his throat,

the apartment buildings dark-windowed,

the sky close enough to poke with my finger.

Now, knowledge erodes wonder.

You can read the rest of the poem here.

At Wild Rose Reader, I have a review of Ann Whitford Paul’s All by Herself, a book of poems and suggestions for other books that are great resources for Women’s History Month.

The Poetry Friday Roundup is at The Simple and the Ordinary.