Marian Kaplun Shapiro
Surprise.Then smile. Even laugh, perhaps. From the moment babies ‘get’ the peek-a-boo game, the pleasure of humor becomes a part of their lives. English being a language rife with homonyms and thus with accidental lingual confusions and deliberate puns, writers can tickle the funnybones of their readers – and themselves – with plays on words, as I’ve done here. It’s delightful to slip in some underlying meaning along with the smile too – the sugar that helps the medicine go down, so to say. And I do admit to enjoying those poems that are successful in that way. ________________________________________________________________________________________________
After They Leave
Today a stranger might think it’s quiet
only the hmm of the refrigerator and the battery clock,
my breathing, the stranger’s heartbeat,
a fan twirling on low. But the air is full of piercing
screeches and shouts,
giggles, generations
of squeaks and squeals,
train whistles, truck motors,
and animals who live in cardboard covered books.
Cluck-cluck. Mooooo! Woofwoof!
Wooowooo! Vroom!
Father > boy, not yet two, you stood at this very window
as the city paved this very street your son looks out on. Cah!
he points. Fruck! you crowed, while we worried, just in passing,
about the r.
Hat
In her 21st month my granddaughter
collects new words, staples for her cupboard.
Frugal and sensible, like a good Maine cook,
she makes do with what she has on hand. She
turns mistakes into triumphs. All of us learn
to laugh and marvel at the world again. “Show
me your cabin!” I say. She ponders the request,
and opens the kitchen cabinet door, pointing
at it triumphantly.
Who learns from whom? HAT! she announces,
meaning (1) That is a hat; (2) Where
is my hat? (3) I want my hat (= I
want to go out); (4) Take off my/your hat
(we have come in). All that.
One morning, early, I’m off
for a solitary walk. The others
are sleeping. Suddenly, I hear
a voice I have not noticed flapping
in my inner landscape. HAT! she says,
insisting. (Get your) HAT!
Lesson On Pronouns For A Two-Year Old
Your name is you
while I am saying it.
And you are I, when
you are calling me,
are you not? Then I am
you, at least for then,
before you become I
again.
So why is it that empathy
is so far up the scale
developmentally?
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Marian Kaplun Shapiro practices as a psychologist and poet in Lexington, Massachusetts. She is the author of a professional book, Second Childhood (Norton, 1988), a poetry book, Players In The Dream, Dreamers In The Play (Plain View Press, 2007) and two chapbooks: Your Third Wish, (Finishing Line, 2007); and The End Of The World, Announced On Wednesday (Pudding House, 2007). She was named Senior Poet Laureate of Massachusetts in 2006 and again in 2008.