`I Kicked a Rock'

My 7-year-old announced last week he likes poetry and wants to write it. His self-declared models are Shel Silverstein, Jack Prelutsky (the “Children’s Poet Laureate,” whose work is superior to Charles Simic’s), Mother Goose, limericks and the singsong gibberish coming out of my mouth. Michael has asked me to publish one of his poems. Please, be kind. This is juvenilia and should be judged “experimental” in the best sense, by a young poet whose voice is still evolving. Unlike the work of the influences cited above, this poem is written in vers libre, with but a single rhyme (not counting the internal rhyme). With the author’s permission, I have titled it “Untitled”:

“I saw a pumpkin when I was trick or treating.
I kicked a rock.
The cake she baked made me sick with food poisoning.
I saw a black duck.
I saw a pickup truck.”

I savor the Johnsonian allusion in the second line and the sly send-up of Texas, our adopted state. At the risk of violating a confidence, let me suggest an unlikely influence: Tadeusz Różewicz. The other day I watched clandestinely as Michael examined the books on my nightstand. On top was the new Archipelago Books edition of Różewicz’s New Poems, translated from the Polish my Bill Johnston. Różewicz is a poet I have been unable to enjoy as much as I do his compatriots Zbigniew Herbert and Czeslaw Milosz, but Michael apparently feels otherwise and perused the volume for a good 10 minutes. You decide. This excerpt is from “the wheels are going around,” collected in 2004 in exit:

“yesterday between apocalypse and idyll
I heard across the ether
that the greenhouse effect
is caused
not only by the automobile industry
but also by cowpats”

ADDENDUM: Michael asked me to append this poem, "Oh, Dragon," as more representative of his work:

"Oh, dragon!
Oh, dragon!
What makes you a dragon?
Is it your firey breath or
Your wings that fly gently through the sky?
What makes you a dragon?'