Tuesday Teatime: As I told it to my friends
The following narrative was sent by a Brave Mom who shared her teatime experience with her friends:
This was so cool. I decided to do the poetry tea time suggested on a website my sister Holly recommended that promotes a lifestyle of writers. So we set out fancy tablecloth, and hot chocolate, lit candles and I got an anthology of poetry I had in college . I read a Robert Frost Poem, and was shocked to realize I knew the last stanza : “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.”
“Why did he say the last line twice?” asked my 7 year old.
We began a wonderful discussion of how the poet uses repetition, rhyme patterns, and images to create his message. We decided he was wistfully pausing to see the beauty of God’s creation, but duty and obligation called more loudly than his desire to remain watching the snow, so he somewhat regretfully moved on.
Then the seven year old chose a poem by Shakespeare called “Under the Greenwood Tree.” It uses wonderful metaphors to depict (we think) a flower under a tree. It was like a riddle, and we had great fun trying to figure out that he was talking about a flower. (If we are correct, which we may not be.)
Then she asked what was happening in the world when Shakespeare was alive. I got out my Wall Chart of World History, which I am not sure I have opened in the ten years I have owned it, and we discovered Copernicus, Henry the 8th, microscopes, and age of exploration were all occuring during Shakespeare’s time. She asked how people could have thought the earth was the center of the universe, and we discussed how observations can lead to wrong conclusions. Then, she decided she would like to write a poem, and illustrate it.
Sometimes life is like a geode, such surprising magical beauty behind the
simplest of exteriors.
Blessings,
Brave Mom!
