~Sharing Gum~
When you were young
you lived as you do now,
Apparently prosaic moments
Formed first-glance nonsense
That comes to you (at any rate) as pivotal in time.
Kindergarten is replete with these
Like the day she smiled
as she handed you some gum
on a bus ride long enough
to practice bubble blowing.
She is an expert eager to explain,
but your failed attempts motivate
a change in lesson plans,
and whistling ability becomes
another notch that nudges you
to a personality
answering the questions never asked.
Kindergarten is full of those too.
But I was not alone
in the debt I owed this girl
when you were whistling the song
that made me cry.
It seems there is no limit
to the radiated change
the universe enacts
when we share gum.
-A poem by emj
Things That Are Made 