In other families, kids learn to play ball from their parents, or to fish, or to dance. In ours, we learned to be poets. And the Davie/Buswell history runs parallel with the poets Americans (used to…) love, hold in high esteem, and name their schools after.

—Not that we today are all that prolific, but writing is still a regular part of our lives.

There is a book I’m thinking about replacing. Poems Every Child Should Know. Replacing because it is so worn, so loved, so crumbling with age and use and thousands of page-turnings, that if we hold it much longer, it’ll be a goner.

The intro is dated 1904, by Mary E. Burt of The John A, Browning School.

There are very few images included; we see a _color_ frontispiece and a lovely drawing of lily of the valley.

And I love Kipling’s verse on those who talk to butterflies:

True Royalty

There was never a Queen like Balkis,
⁠From here to the wide world’s end;
But Balkis talked to a butterfly
⁠   As you would talk to a friend.
There was never a King like Solomon,
⁠   Not since the world began;
But Solomon talked to a butterfly
⁠   As a man would talk to a man.
She was Queen of Sabaea—
⁠   And he was Asia’s Lord
But they both of ’em talked to butterflies
⁠   When they took their walks abroad.

(When this book was published, Kipling was still alive.)

A few years ago, I made a “harness” of thread, to keep the covers together and on the inside pages.