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.
Clive Watkins
April 5, 2026‘Was famous for poems’… Yes, I know that one! – ‘He writes about everything in the world’ can be read in more than one way, which, given the speaker, the person referred to and the person reporting this remark, is intriguing. And is there a world beyond the world, one that cannot be, or is not to be, written about? I shall think on these things. The wisdom of youth reflected in age…