Poems 44 and 45 (Pandemic Day 52)

Arithmetic 

Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head.

Arithmetic tells you how many you lose or win if you know how many you have before you

         lost or won

Arithmetic is seven eleven all good children go to heaven-or five six bundle of sticks.

Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand to your pencil to your paper            till you get the answer.

Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and you can look out

      of the window and see the blue sky--or the answer is wrong and you have to start all over         and try again and see how it comes out this time.

If you take a number and double it and double it again and then double it a few more times,             the number get bigger and bigger and goes higher and higher and only arithmetic can tell            you what the number is when you decide to quit doubling.

Arithmetic is where you have to multiply--and you carry the multiplication table in your head              and hope you won't lose it.

If you have two animal crackers, one good and one bad, and you eat one and a striped zebra            with streaks all over him eats the other, how many animal crackers will you have if                  offers you five six seven somebody and you say No no no and you say Nay nay nay                and you say Nix nix nix?

If you ask your mother for one fried egg for breakfast and she gives you two fried eggs                 and you eat both of them, who is. better in arithmetic, you or your mother?

Buffalo Dusk

The buffaloes are gone.

And those who saw the buffaloes are gone.

Those who saw the buffaloes by thousands and how they pawed the 

          prairie sod into dust with their hoofs, their great heads down pawing 

          on in a great pageant of dusk,

Those who saw the buffaloes are gone.

And the buffaloes are gone.

Carl Sandburg, Rainbows ARe Made: Poems by Carl Sandburg, selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1982.

These poems were selected for young readers by Hopkins who had been a teacher and fell in love with Sandburg's poetry early in his career.  His affection is evident in the poetry selections and design

of the book.  There is plenty of room on the pages for the poems to shine on their own, the full page wood engravings are masterly and engaging and the chapter headings are a poem themselves—about poetry....”Poetry is a series of explanations of life, fading off into horizons too swift for explanations.” Is the first one.  I haven’t read a lot of Sandburg, but I’m reminded now to spend more time with this poet who...”stops for the buzzing of bumblebees on bright Tuesdays in any summer month...”