Poem 10 - Little Things

Sharon Olds is one of my very favorite poets. I hardly read a single poem of hers that doesn’t knock my head back. She writes of everyday things with clear insight, making small things big things (because that is, after all, the proper place for most small things). My favorites of her poems capture moments in time. This one captures a moment beautifully and connects us to other moments in her life. I love that it speaks of the love for her child and the very different, but equally compelling, love for her father.

For all you parents with kids going off to summer camp, this one is for you.

Little Things

Sharon Olds

After she’s gone to camp, in the early

evening I clear our girl’s breakfast dishes

from the rosewood table, and find a small

crystallized pool of maple syrup, the

grains standing there, round, in the night, I

rub it with my fingertip

as if I could read it, this raised dot of

amber sugar, and this time

when I think of my father, I wonder why

I think of my father, of the beautiful blood-red

glass in his hand, or his black hair gleaming like a

broken-open coal. I think I learned to

love the little things about him

because of all the big things

I could not love, no one could, it would be wrong to.

So when I fix on this tiny image of resin

or sweep together with the heel of my hand a

pile of my son’s sunburn peels like

insect wings, where I peeled his back the night before camp,

I am doing something I learned early to do, I am

paying attention to small beauties,

whatever I have—as if it were our duty to

find things to love, to bind ourselves to this world.