Phoenix Hopes

Poem In Your Pocket Day April 29, 2010

Today is Poem In Your Pocket day and I almost missed it! Unfortunately it’s an easy holiday to miss — no one gets the day off from work to celebrate (although, ironically, if I didn’t have today off I wouldn’t have taken the time to read the posting on another blog that mentioned it and would have missed it entirely again this year), there isn’t any special Poem-related holiday food, no decorations sold in stores. In all honesty I think I’m a bit too introverted/shy to actually pull a poem from my pocket and read it to someone. That just feels too awkward and geeky. Instead, I’ll share it with you!

I can’t remember where I first read this poem but lines have been stuck in my head for years and years. For a long time I thought it was in the Golden Book of Poems I got when I was in Fifth Grade.

Edited by Louis Untermeyer and illustrated by Joan Walsh Anglund, I LOVE this book. It’s one of the few books on my shelf from my childhood and I pick it up much like eating comfort food. The pictures are sweet (how could Joan Walsh Anglund be anything but sweet?) and the poems are memorable. Someday I’ll share more of my favorites but the poem that stuck in my mind isn’t found there.

Over the years I searched the internet. I had no idea who the author was or even the title of the poem, but the first four lines stuck in my memory. Recently I googled the first line again and finally I found it!

Young Love

VIII

The world is cold and gray and wet,

And I am heavy-hearted, yet

When I am home and look to see

The place my letters wait for me,

If I should find one letter there,

I think I should not greatly care

If it were rainy or were fair,

For all the world would suddenly

Seem like a festival to me.

Sara Teasdale

These lines run through my mind regularly when I’m headed home at the end of a long day. I may have been among people all day on the bus and train, in the office and cafeteria, but they aren’t my heart-friends. I’m sociable but there are no real connections. The real me is hidden behind the office persona. But when I get off the train, tired and dragging from the day, and start the 7 minute drive home, I think about what is waiting and the day gets immediately brighter.

First are my real, physical connections — are any of my children home? Has the cat missed me? Who might I see tonight at music practice or in the store? And then I think about my friends inside “the place my letters wait for me”, my computer. Did anyone send me a personal e-mail or post to my Facebook page? What updates will I find on my favorite blogs? Did someone who knows me, the real me not just the office persona that most of the world sees, send me something personal today?

Today my friends, I share my poem with you. My world is brighter because you are part of it.