Saying Goodbye to Very Young Children by John Updike
They will not be the same next time. The sayings
so cute, just slightly off, will be corrected.
Their eyes will be more skeptical, plugged in
the more securely to the worldly buzz
of television, alphabet, and street talk,
culture polluting their gazes' pure blue.
It makes you see at last the value of
those boring aunts and neighbors (their smells
of summer sweat and cigarettes, their faces
like shapes of sky between shade-giving leaves)
who knew you from the start, when you were zero,
cooing their nothings before you could be bored
or knew a name, not even your own, or how
this world brave with hellos turns all goodbye. Art by Rebecca Hendin Recommended listening: Ha Ha Ha Ha - White Denim Links of the Day: Buzzfeed Reader Pigeon Air Patrol to the rescue! I Found The House My Grandparents Abandoned in 1947
Vintage embroidered maps