I’m back to birthdays. And please be forewarned…the following poem is a raw, raw draft of a poem. Who knows what the final poem will become? Maybe a limerick or a haiku or a villanelle.
But that’s okay. As my very smart husband says, “You can’t be Robert Frostette every night.”
Last month, when I was on a panel with TeachingAuthors.com at the Illinois Reading Council’s annual conference, everyone told me that I HAD to go to the Lincoln Museum. I did and WOW–what a fabulous museum!
There is so much to love about this intellectual and playful and visceral dream of Lincoln’s life and presidency.
A docent walked me through the reconstruction of his famous log cabin home.
FEBRUARY 12th
By April Halprin Wayland
When Abraham Lincoln was two years old,
he
and his parents
and his four brothers and sisters
and their dog
moved into
an itty bitty
teensy weensy
cabin on Knob Creek Farm.
When little Abraham snuffled
as he slept between his brothers and sisters
on the cabin’s wood floor
next to his parents’ bed in the bedroom
which was also living room,
dining room,
playroom,
homework room
and smoky kitchen,
did his parents ever think he’d grow so beanstalk tall
he’d have to stoop to enter his future wife’s house?
Did his step-mother lie in bed thinking,
One day, little Abraham will be
the 16th President of the United States?
When Abraham’s father watched him
sleeping snug as a bug in a rug
in their itty bitty
teensy weensy cabin
with his wee mouth open just a bit
and his little legs moving all about,
did he ever whisper into that dark cabin,
Happy Birthday Mr. President?
© 2010 April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved
Please leave a comment on www.TeachingAuthors.com (You can leave your comment after any of our posts…it doesn’t matter if I’m posting or one of the five other authors is. Just scroll down to the first place you can comment. I’d love to hear your thoughts~)