When I was a bit of glittering dust I was preparing for Robert Louis Stevenson

Evidence is mounting. The tide as if first page of a new chapter, as if the enamored sensing enamoree's presence, as if ingrained impulse permitting movements of restructure is turning. In selecting poems I read in my twenties for postings—twenty years before I ventured to write poetry—I realize I have always loved poetry.

When I was a bit of glittering dust in the wide beyond I liked poetry. A little bit of the glittering dust glittered in me and glitters still. It's a good feeling, knowing I am who I am, that decisions which seemed so foolish weren't. Okay, could have been handled in a differently but curvatures of space and time emphasize illusions of hindsight.

I had three different copies of A Child Garden's of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) as a kid. Each book had different illustrators, different illustrators. RLS inspires.

I look forward to the day he inspires illustrators and publishers of all nationalities or at least all nationalities impacted by colonialism and all nationalities whose children read RLS.

My Kingdom

Down by a shining water well
I found a very little dell,
No higher than my head.
The heather and the gorse about
In summer bloom were coming out,
Some yellow and some red.

I called the little pool a sea;
The little hills were big to me;
For I am very small.
I made a boat, I made a town,
I searched the caverns up and down,
And named them one and all.

And all about was mine, I said,
The little sparrows overhead,
The little minnows too.
This was the world and I was king;
For me the bees came by to sing,
For me the swallows flew.

I played there were no deeper seas,
Nor any wider plains than these,
Nor other kings than me.
At last I heard my mother call
Out from the house at evenfall,
To call me home to tea.

And I must rise and leave my dell,
And leave my dimpled water well,
And leave my heather blooms.
Alas! and as my home I neared,
How very big my nurse appeared.
How great and cool the rooms!

___________
Robert Louis Stevenson, A Child's Garden of Verses