FAMOUS FOR POEMS

For one week’s show-and-tell when my granddaughter

was seven she took in, unprompted,

the book I had dedicated to her.

She told her mother, “I told the teacher,

‘My grandpa was famous for poems.

He writes about everything in the world.’

But I don’t know why I said ‘was’.” Perhaps

she was rehearsing my obituary.

The teacher, keeping faith as the good will do,

sight-read the title poem, A JAR

OF STICKLEBACKS, to her multi-lingual,

multi-cultural class – a piece about shattered

glass, and spilt fish, and my grandpa rushing

to the rescue, which ends, ‘imagine me

holding up to the light, unbroken,

a jar with all your wishes, all your hopes’.

Note: see https://davidselzer.com/2013/01/a-jar-of-sticklebacks/ – the poem was first published by Armadillo Central – http://www.armadillocentral.com/armadillo-central/a-jar-of-sticklebacks-david-selzer.