原創詩：
My mother stands at the screen door, laughing.
“Out out damn Spot,” she commands our silly dog.
I wonder what this means. I rise into adult air
like a hollyhock, I’m so proud to be loved
like this. The air is tight to my nervous body.
I use new clothes and shoes the way the corn-studded
soil around here uses nitrogen, giddily.
Ohio, Ohio, Ohio. Often I sing
to myself all day like a fieldful of August
insects, just things I whisper, really,
a trance in sneakers. I’m learning
to read from my mother and soon I’ll go to school,
I hate it when anyone dies or leaves and the air
goes slack around my body and I have to hug myself,
a cloud, an imaginary friend, the stream in the road-
side park. I love to be called for dinner.
Spot goes out and I go in and the lights
in the kitchen go on and the dark,
which also has a body like a cloud’s,
leans lightly against the house. Tomorrow
I’ll find the sweatstains it left, little grey smudges.
.?????? .?????? .
Here’s a sky no higher than a streetlamp,
and a stack of morning papers cinched by wire.
It’s 4:00 A.M. A stout dog, vaguely beagle,
minces over the dry, fresh-fallen snow;
and here’s our sleep-sodden paperboy
with his pliers, his bike, his matronly dog,
his unclouding face set for paper route
like an alarm clock. Here’s a memory
in the making, for this could be the morning
he doesn’t come home and his parents
two hours later drive his route until
they find him asleep, propped against a streetlamp,
his papers all delivered and his dirty paper-
satchel slack, like an emptied lung,
and he blur-faced and iconic in the morning
air rinsing itself a paler and paler blue
through which a last few dandruff-flecks
of snow meander casually down.
The dog squeaks in out of the dark,
snuffling
me too me too
. And here he goes
home to memory, and to hot chocolate
on which no crinkled skin forms like infant ice,
and to the long and ordinary day,
school, two triumphs and one severe
humiliation on the playground, the past
already growing its scabs, the busride home,
dinner, and evening leading to sleep
like the slide that will spill him out, come June,
into the eye-reddening chlorine waters
of the municipal pool. Here he goes to bed.
Kiss. Kiss. Teeth. Prayers. Dark. Dark.
Here the dog lies down by his bed,
and sighs and farts. Will he always be
this skinny, chicken-bones?
He’ll remember like a prayer
how his mother made breakfast for him
every morning before he trudged out
to snip the papers free. Just as
his mother will remember she felt
guilty never to wake up with him
to give him breakfast. It was Cream
of Wheat they always or never had together.
It turns out you are the story of your childhood
and you’re under constant revision,
like a lonely folktale whose invisible folks
are all the selves you’ve been, lifelong,
shadows in fog, grey glimmers at dusk.
And each of these selves had a childhood
it traded for love and grudged to give away,
now lost irretrievably, in storage
like a set of dishes from which no food,
no Cream of Wheat, no rabbit in mustard
sauce, nor even a single raspberry,
can be eaten until the afterlife,
which is only childhood in its last
disguise, all radiance or all humiliation,
and so it is forfeit a final time.
In fact it was awful, you think, or why
should the piecework of grief be endless?
Only because death is, and likewise loss,
which is not awful, but only breathtaking.
There’s no truth about your childhood,
though there’s a story, yours to tend,
like a fire or garden. Make it a good one,
since you’ll have to live it out, and all
its revisions, so long as you all shall live,
for they shall be gathered to your deathbed,
and they’ll have known to what you and they
would come, and this one time they’ll weep for you.
The map in the shopping center has an X
signed “you are here.” A dream is like that.
In a dream you are never eighty, though
you may risk death by other means:
you’re on a ledge and memory calls you
to jump, but a deft cop talks you in
to a small, bright room, and snickers.
And in a dream, you’re everyone somewhat,
but not wholly. I think I know how that
works: for twenty-one years I had a father
and then I became a father, replacing him
but not really. Soon my sons will be fathers.
Surely, that’s what middle-aged means,
being father and son to sons and father.
That a male has only one mother is another
story, told wherever men weep wholly.
Though nobody’s replaced. In one dream
I’m leading a rope of children to safety,
through a snowy farm. The farmer comes out
and I have to throw snowballs well to him
so we may pass. Even dreaming, I know
he’s my father, at ease in his catcher’s
squat, and that the dream has revived
to us both an old unspoken fantasy:
we’re a battery. I’m young, I’m brash,
I don’t know how to pitch but I can
throw a lamb chop past a wolf. And he
can handle pitchers and control a game.
I look to him for a sign. I’d nod
for anything. The damn thing is hard to grip
without seams, and I don’t rely only
on my live, young arm, but throw by all
the body I can get behind it, and it fluffs
toward him no faster than the snow
in the dream drifts down. Nothing
takes forever, but I know what the phrase
means. The children grow more cold
and hungry and cruel to each other
the longer the ball’s in the air, and it begins
to melt. By the time it gets to him we’ll be
our waking ages, and each of us is himself
alone, and we all join hands and go.
.?????? .?????? .
Toward dawn, rain explodes on the tin roof
like popcorn. The pale light is streaked by grey
and that green you see just under the surface
of water, a shimmer more than a color.
Time to dive back into sleep, as if into
happiness, that neglected discipline ....
In those sixth-grade book reports
you had to say if the book was optimistic
or not, and everyone looked at you
the same way: how would he turn out?
He rolls in his sleep like an otter.
Uncle Ed has a neck so fat it’s funny,
and on the way to work he pries the cap
off a Pepsi. Damn rain didn’t cool one weary
thing for long; it’s gonna be a cooker.
The boy sleeps with a thin chain of sweat
on his upper lip, as if waking itself,
becoming explicit, were hard work.
Who knows if he’s happy or not?
A child is all the tools a child has,
growing up, who makes what he can.
詩的分析與詮釋
這首詩透過生動的意象和情感深度，優美地捕捉了童年中溫柔而複雜的瞬間。詩人反思了與母親、家庭狗 Spot 以及塑造孩子世界的日常經歷的回憶。詩探討了愛、成長、失落、記憶和身份的主題。孩子的視角既天真又富有洞察力，展現了對被愛的驕傲以及對生命和人際關係脆弱性的敏感意識。
詩的開頭是一個溫暖的家庭場景，母親的笑聲和對狗的命令創造了生動的氛圍。孩子感受到驕傲和愛，將自己的成長比作向上生長的葵花。對於俄亥俄州和自然世界的提及使詩歌根植於特定的時間和地點，喚起了懷舊的家鄉感。
隨著詩的進展，語調轉向更具反思性和沉重的情感，思考失落和悲傷——人們去世或離開的痛苦，隨之而來的孤獨，以及記憶如何成為我們一生中攜帶的故事。詩中還觸及了生命的循環性，詩人自己成為父親，理解世代之間的延續。
夢的意象和隱喻，例如詩人向父親扔雪球的夢，象徵著過去和現在自我的持續關係。詩的結尾是一個安靜的雨和睡眠的場景，強調了清醒生活與夢境、幸福與艱辛之間的微妙平衡。
背景與作者介紹
這首詩是一篇反思性的作品，可能源於作者對童年和家庭生活的個人經歷和觀察。作者擅長將日常時刻與深刻的情感洞察相結合，創造出與各年齡段讀者共鳴的敘事。
詩的背景設置在俄亥俄州，對家庭生活的詳細描述表明了對地方和記憶的深刻連結。作者的風格結合了抒情語言和自然意象，使詩既易於理解又富有意義。
對孩子和學生的教學價值
從這首詩中，孩子和學生可以學到：
- **家庭和愛的重要性：**詩強調了母親的養育角色和家的安慰。
- **理解情感：**它探討了驕傲、恐懼、失落和希望的感受，幫助年輕讀者認識和表達自己的情感。
- **記憶的力量：**詩展示了記憶如何塑造身份，以及童年經歷如何伴隨我們一生。
- **與自然的連結：**通過對植物、動物和天氣的提及，詩鼓勵欣賞自然世界。
- **生命的循環：**它以溫和、易於理解的方式介紹了成長、衰老和世代關係的概念。
生活和學習中的實用應用
- **情感素養：**教師可以利用這首詩來討論複雜的情感以及應對變化或失落。
- **創意寫作：**學生可以受到啟發，寫下自己的詩或關於家庭和童年的故事。
- **閱讀理解：**詩的豐富意象和象徵提供了分析和詮釋練習的材料。
- **文化和個人身份：**詩鼓勵反思自己的背景和個人歷史。
閱讀理解問題
- 誰是詩中的講述者，他與其他角色的關係是什麼？
- “出出，該死的 Spot”這句話暗示了狗和家庭氛圍的什麼？
- 詩是如何描述被愛的感覺的？
- 當有人去世或離開時，講述者經歷了什麼情感？
- 詩中報童的故事有什麼意義？
- 詩是如何探討記憶和童年的主題的？
- 向父親扔雪球的夢象徵著什麼？
- 詩是如何描繪時間的流逝和生命的循環的？
- 自然在詩的意象中扮演了什麼角色？
- 詩傳達了關於悲傷和失落的什麼信息？
閱讀理解問題的答案
- 講述者是一個孩子，反思自己與母親、狗和家庭的經歷。
- 這句話顯示了一種玩耍的、親切的命令，表明了一個生動而充滿愛的家庭。
- 被愛的感覺被描述為令人振奮和驕傲，就像一株植物向上生長。
- 講述者感到悲傷和孤獨，需要安慰自己。
- 報童的故事代表了責任、日常和生命的脆弱。
- 詩展示了記憶作為我們不斷修訂的故事，塑造了我們的身份。
- 這個夢象徵著父子之間的聯繫和時間的流逝。
- 詩描繪了時間的連續性和循環性，童年記憶影響著成年期。
- 自然用來表現成長、變化和情感狀態。
- 詩暗示悲傷是生命中自然而壯麗的一部分，而不僅僅是可怕的事情。
這首詩提供了對童年和人類經歷的豐富探索，使其成為教育和個人反思的寶貴資源。
