Little Poem, Little Pilgrimage
By Nettie Farris - Floyds Knobs, Indiana, USA - 15 May 2016
The Day Little Sunflower Became a Poem
and Little Poem Became a Sunflower
Little Poem loved sunshine. And he loved repetition
and rhythm. So he spent his days walking outdoors.
The continuous left right motion of his feet both
cleared and ordered his mind. It kept his mind from
getting stuck, fixated on an unsolvable problem. It
kept it moving forward, like a Mazurka or an Etude
by Chopin. Often, he would stop and talk to Little
Sunflower, who was always cheerful, even when the
day itself was overcast and gray, while he was not. He
couldn’t decide whether she was cheerful because she
was so full of sun, or whether she was full of sun
because she was so cheerful. That was another
Gordian knot. He decided to stop thinking about it.
The only thing he knew for certain was that she was a
flower of God, and he wanted to be a flower of God
also.
Often He Awoke to Discover
Someone Had Stolen the Furniture
A few of Little Poem’s friends were Memoirs (with
traumatic childhoods) but most of his friends were
Novels (of tragic consequence), so he began to feel a
bit insignificant. He learned to puff himself up, first
with words. Words he was not really comfortable
with at all. Words that would make him sound smart.
Then he added simile. Lots of simile. So that all his
insignificant parts were replaced by things more
interesting, things that mattered. He acquired
memorable lines and phrases, ones people would
enjoy repeating. He acquired opinions, and he made
them known. He made them sound authoritative,
certain. But he wasn’t really certain at all. He wasn’t
even sure the floor would be there when he rolled out
of bed in the morning. (Often he awoke to discover
someone had stolen all the furniture.) So he
eliminated it all. He became very small again. With
lots of room. Room for Truth and Beauty to seep in.
All on its own.