PARKER A. POODLE ™
A BIT OF HISTORY Copyright ©2021 Sarah Becker
I
n this parent fatigued pandemic I, Parker A. Poodle, a reading education assistance dog, have been asked to help you “Spin your imagination a little faster.” To assure children “The shallowest breath will generate/ a haiku, limerick or wellpruned lyric.” Hospice nurses now write lyrics to help them cope with the Covid crisis; write poetry to process their ICU experiences. As of January 14 the total number of U.S. Covid-19 cases was 23,214,472. The number continues to climb. Covid-19 has taken a measurable toll. We have fought its spread for months and all are tired. Of social distancing, virtual distancing; stay at home orders and remote learning. School and library facilities are mostly closed and school test scores have declined. Home confinement is hard, I know! “I stare at the page, waiting for my wattage,/ wondering if it’s time to invest in/subsidized solar scripting,” British poet and pal Elisabeth Rowe penned. “Time rolls over/ like a puppy in the sunshine/ things I am paying attention to/ become weightless,” Rowe wrote In the Garden. Not so now. Most humans—it seems— feel weighed down, pandemic plagued, and overloaded. How can I, a canine assist? I encourage you to express your feelings in writing; to use poetry to explain the day’s exploits. To maybe cure what ails. A narrative poem is one that tells a tale, a story. A historical story perhaps, or— in the case of the pandemic— home life. Elise Paschen, editor of Poetry Speaks to Children, describes poetry as a “journey
Old Town Crier
of
discovery…filled with range— historically, poetically, and visually. Poetry is like a diving board, a place from which to plunge into [life’s] depths.” Poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) wrote To Flush, My Dog in the 1840s. Her cocker spaniel was a Loving friend. “But of thee it will be said,/ This dog watched beside a bed/ Day and night unweary—.” Walt Whitman described
Fireside poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) “as a universal poet, of women and young people.” The Civil War (1861-1865) loomed and Longfellow called “for courage.” He published the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere in 1861. “Listen my children, and you shall hear/ Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,/ On the eighteenth of April, in SeventyFive:/ Hardly a man in now alive/ Who now remembers that famous day and year./ He said to a friend, “If the British march/ By land or sea from the tower to-night,/ Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch/ Of the Old North-Church-tower, as a signal light,/ One if by land,
and two if by sea;/ And I on the opposite shore will be,/ Ready to ride and spread the alarm/ Through every Middlesex village and farm,/ For the country-folk to be up and to arm… You know the rest./ In the books you have read,/ How the British Regulars fired and fled—,/ How the farmers gave them ball for ball,/ From behind each fence and farmyard-wall,/ Chasing the red-coats down the lane,/ Then crossing the fields to emerge again/… So through the night rode Paul Revere;/ And so through the night went his cry of alarm/ To every Middlesex village and farm,—/ A cry of defiance and not of fear,/ A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,/ And a word that shall echo forevermore!/…”
Republican President Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809-April 15, 1865) wrote his first poem in his youth. “Abraham Lincoln/his hand and his pen/he will be good but/god knows When.” Lincoln emancipated most of America’s slaves on January 1, 1863. Poet and Civil War hospital volunteer Walt Whitman (1819-1892) wrote Chants Democratic 6 closer to his death. Described as America’s “most influential poet,” Whitman was bent on democracy. “You just maturing youth! You male or female!/ Remember the organic compact of These States,/ Remember the pledge of the Old Thirteen thenceforward to the rights, life, liberty, equality of man,/ Remember what was promulgated by the founders, ratified by the States, signed in black and white by the Commissioners, and read by Washington at the head of the army,/ Remember the purposes of the founders,--Remember Washington;/…. Remember, government is to subserve individuals,/ Not any, not the President, is to have one jot more than you or me,/ Not any habitan of America is to have one jot less than you or me./ Anticipate when the thirty or fifty millions, are to become the hundred, or two hundred millions, of equal freemen and freewomen, amicably joined./ Recall ages—One age is but a part—ages are but a part;/ Recall the angers, bickerings, delusions, superstitions, of the idea of caste,/ Recall the bloody cruelties and crimes./ Anticipate the best women; I say an unnumbered new A BIT OF HISTORY > PAGE 10
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