Poem of the Day: “Sizing Up” by Mary Soon Lee, Poet of the Week

Songs of Eretz Poetry Review is pleased to present “Sizing Up” by Mary Soon Lee, Poet of the Week.  A brief biography of Ms. Lee may be found here:  http://eretzsongs.blogspot.com/2015/03/poet-of-week-mary-soon-lee.html.

Sizing Up

Mary Soon Lee

I sat in my son's classroom

for the first hour of his first day

while he measured away

with a red and yellow tape measure,

finding the length of the rooms,

the width of the dividing wall,

the height of a train tunnel.

He might have been a builder,

an architect, an artist:

so serious, so engrossed

as he checked the dimensions

to make sure there was room

for him.

Poet's Notes:  This poem is about my son's first day in Pre-Kindergarten when he was four years old. He is fifteen years old now, but I still remember that morning.

Editor’s Note:  The last two lines really make this poem sing, for what room could possibly contain the curiosity and intellect of such a boy?