What is your wish?
wish, a poem by Linda Sue Park
I’m a huge fan of children’s picture books. They are beautiful, both the artwork and the writing, and I cherish the messages of so many of them. We all need to be reminded that we are loved and that we are important and that there are places where we fit in. These wounds can last a lifetime, and picture books can be balm to our sun-raddled hearts.
Linda Sue Park writes books for children, including picture books. This poem describes how a book or a poem becomes balm to the heart, when we love it so much that, like a beloved stuffed animal, it stays with us and becomes part of us.
For someone to read a poem again, and again, and then, having lifted it from page to brain—the easy part— cradle it on the longer trek from brain all the way to heart. Linda Sue Park, "Wish" from Tap Dancing on the Roof. Copyright © 2007 by Linda Sue Park. from Poetry Foundation
What poems (or picture books) have made the trek to your heart? It doesn’t have to be an entire poem; there might be only a couple of lines that have made it to your heart. And it doesn’t have to be anything terribly inspiring or healing: how many of us can recite part of Jabberwocky? After all, they say that laughter is powerful medicine. Who among us can’t recite at least part of Green Eggs and Ham?
Some of the poems that are (at least partially) written in my heart are Jabberwocky (“O frabjous day! Calloo! Callay!”) and The Walrus and the Carpenter (“of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings”!), Kubla Khan (“for he on honey-dew hath fed and drunk the milk of Paradise”) by Coleridge, Psalm 4 (“I lie down in peace, at once I fall asleep, for only you, Lord, make me dwell in safety”) and even Twelfth Night Act 2 Scene 3 (“Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?”). Because it was my daughter’s favorite, The Foot Book by Dr. Seuss (“Left foot, right foot, feet, feet, feet. Oh how many feet you meet!”): I can’t tell you how many times we read this together. I’m sure there are more that don’t come to mind immediately. There are so many amazing, beautiful poems around, and they don’t have to be hundreds of years old to become beloved.
My wish is that you have a poem that you’ve read again and again until it’s made the trek to your heart. And I also wish that maybe you’ll share one of these poems with a friend or loved one. You never know when someone needs a poem, and it’s always handy to carry one around in your heart.