How Children and Adults View Time and Space

About this poem

This poem falls into the realm of human perception, human behavior, and the nature of human reality Itself. Dear reader and fellow traveler of life, have you ever wondered how children and adults view time and space quite differently; that while we, as social beings, commune, communicate, and dwell, mostly together, and sometimes even apart, we inhabit different spaces and different senses of time? My thirteen year-old middle school granddaughter, Mikaiya Zenee Beasley, eagerly brought this to my attention, when she, being driven on the way home from school, announced dramatically to me: “Grandpa, each day is so short, while a year seems forever!” This ‘quirky’ question, bearing a puzzling, yet strident philosophical contrast, registered strongly in my poetic ears. It made my heart leap upwards in reflective thought; and I informed my granddaughter that her remarks seemed so ironically relevant. Her follow up response was immediate: “Grandpa, you should put our conversation into a poem. I would like to reflect, as time goes by, on what we, in this moment, have shared together.” It is that discussion, that interesting engagement with my granddaughter, that constitutes the genesis and creation of this poem, which is composed in Tanka 5-7-5-7-7 syllabic format, in twelve stanzas, to convey the personal emotional expression shared by an octogenarian grandfather and his thirteen year-old granddaughter. The poem is written in the form of a poetic Inclusio, with the first and last stanzas being of identical composition to encourage reflection. Indeed, as another thinker, another commentator of space and time, once so prudently observed, the child is father of the man. more »