Sunday, March 23, 1986

Wild Atrocity


Wild Atrocity
by Mary Lee Hahn

Glory be to God for silly things --
For running-dives all in a pile of musky autumn leaves;
For rollercoaster rides in the first car alone;
Wet late-March snowball fights; frisbee flings;
Junk food caloric and sweet -- pizza, french fries, sundaes;
And all jokers, their plots and puns and funny bones.

All things humorous, playful, joking, tickly;
Whatever is unplanned, spontaneous (who knows why?)
With smile, grin; laugh, shout; giggle, groan;
They maintain sanity whose beauty is past lunacy:
PRAISE THEM!

©Mary Lee Hahn, 1986


after Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins
written for my poetry class with Charlotte Huck in my 
MA in Children's Literature program at OSU