Childhood

My childhood days were filled with the love and light that every child rightfully deserves from the time she even begins to be a child.
Angels come to earth in the form of children, with their white, glistening faith, sparkling smiles and glittering eyes, complete with wings and halos (if we are capable of going beyond the mundane and seeing).
‘Childhood’, the word stirs in me a few feelings, brings to me some moments, a few stories, though mostly incomplete and infinite poetry, thoroughly forgotten.
Poetry? Yes, some R.L.Stevension, some Robert Frost, an Alfred Tennyson and thousands and thousands of sounds, a hundred half forgotten words, some colors that the words would feel, some feelings that the verses would color; some fairies, some Gods, some magic and my mother.

I’m no more a child in appearance, though in some ways, other than on the surface, I will still claim to be one. I’ve grown up, into an adult, well into the ways of the world. Still sometimes I find myself face to face with all the forgotten Stevension and Robert Frost they taught me at school. Such profound beauty and completeness they’d given to my life that I still seek them, in books and websites, in the voids of my heads, the spaces of my heart and the closets of my memory.
There are some verses, half forgotten wrapped in cloudy dreams, some hidden by a pale shadow, of perhaps some calamity that had come with it, like a reprimand or a standing-out handed by my teacher and there are some more, glittering, as if through a pool of clear water, like gems at the bottom, reflecting all the sunlight. They hold in them mysteries, good ones, capable of giving hope and joy. They tell stories, some real stories (if, by some faith, we can actually believe that stories can be real), some made in that child’s head of mine! Some smell of naughty children who picked on me, some have the scent of a honey-coloured day, smelling of warm, sticky, bright pink candy and a garden picnic among flowers and butterflies and still others have the smell of old books in the library, of deep incense of a small and beautiful chapel and some smell of hot tears of punishments in PT classes.

A few of the poems which I managed to finally find J

R.L.STEVENSION.
Foreign Lands
Up into the cherry tree
Who should climb but little me?
I held the trunk with both my hands
And looked abroad in foreign lands.
I saw the next door garden lie,
Adorned with flowers, before my eye,
And many pleasant places more
That I had never seen before.
I saw the dimpling river pass
And be the sky's blue looking-glass;
The dusty roads go up and down
With people tramping in to town.
If I could find a higher tree
Farther and farther I should see,
To where the grown-up river slips
Into the sea among the ships,
To where the roads on either hand
Lead onward into fairy land,
Where all the children dine at five,
And all the playthings come alive.

My Shadow
I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.
The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow--
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes goes so little that there's none of him at all.
He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close behind me, he's a coward you can see;
I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!
One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

The Swing (* this poem I studied in Std II or III! It was a favorite! Mom even got me a real swing in our garden)
How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!
Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide, River and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside-- Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown-- Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down!