Favorite Poems
Throughout My Life
101: “My Shadow,” 1885, by Robert Louis
Stevenson (1850-94)
“I have a
little shadow that
Goes in and
out with me”—
This is the
first that I recall—
The first of
poetry.
My grandma
read these words to me
Before I
even knew
What poems
were—what words could be—
And what
those words could do.
In Grandma’s
rocker—on her lap—
We looked
out to the street,
The words of
Stevenson the air
We breathed.
I felt complete.
And decades
on I would recite
This poem to
a child—
My grandson,
Logan, newly born,
I swear that
young boy smiled!
And now my
grandma’s gone, of course.
It doesn’t
seem too fair.
But in our
living room? Right now?
That very
rocking chair.
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