Brave families at the NC Zoological Park today: heat index topping 100, no respite cloud, scant breeze, water fountains running low. Even the rhinos and bongo (antelope) had sense enough to find a patch of shade and not budge from it. But Zoos are made for families, and a good chunk of mine showed up to join me on my first afternoon as Poet-in-Residence.
My kids are 30+; Margaret said she couldn’t remember ever going to the zoo, Josh said his last trip was in seventh grade, Allison has fond memories but they’re getting pretty fuzzy. Jimmy and Dana (Allison’s parents, Josh’s in-laws) and I reminisced about the zoos of our youth and how much things have changed. But four-year-old Saul didn’t need to philosophize – he kept us laughing repeatedly with his hoots of amazement at every new wonder. The park was closing as we literally dragged him away from the underwater viewing of the harbor seals, and even rides on the tramand the bus had his eyes popping. And I honestly don’t recall any complaints about the heat.
It’s not just the old cliché about seeing the world through the eyes of a child. It is something deeper, something that is ingrained in our heredity, essential to our lineage. Something without which we wouldn’t have survived as a species. Shall I call it the desire to give our children joy? It is certainly a self-reinforcing phenomenon, a positive feedback loop: when I see the awe on Saul’s face as he places his hand against the hand of the baby chimpanzee on the other side of the glass, I just want to keep offering him more of those experiences. More and more.
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This poem by Peter Makuck captures for me the yin and yang of this sort of desire for our progeny. We want to protect them from suffering – they will nevertheless experience sorrow. We want to convey to them whatever meaning we’ve discovered – they will have to discover it for themselves. My grandson is the apple, all potentiality and sweetness. I am the stiffening branch. I can only hope the ground I leave him, when he falls, is fertile.
. . . . .
My Son Draws an Apple Tree
I watch it grow
at the end of his dimpled hand
rooted in white paper.
The strokes are fast
and careless, as if the hand
had little time.
Quick black trunk,
a green crown and in the white
air all by itself
a red splotch,
an apple face with a frown
that is his
he gravely says
looking up at me — the stiffening
branch he falls from.
Peter Makuck
from Long Lens, New & Selected Poems, © 2010 by Peter Makuck, Boa Editions, Ltd.
American Poets Continuum Series, No. 121
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Peter Makuck lives on Bogue Banks, one of North Carolina’s barrier islands. He was the first Distinguished Professor of English at East Carolina University, where he taught for thirty years until retiring in 2006. While at ECU he founded and edited the nationally-respected journal Tar River Poetry. He has influenced a generation of North Carolina poets and writers.
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