For Children

Emily Gaw

Introspection

2013 5th-6th Grade Poetry Winner

I was six and three quarters when it dawned on me.
It startled me, how I’d never noticed it before.
How ignorant I had been.
Ignorant
of my own mind.
Of how my thoughts connected,
in a row,
jumping,
from one relevant thought,
to a less relevant one.
I thought of that.
The connection from that thought
to this thought,
and how
in the end
I get absolutely and
completely,
off topic.

Thoughts flow,
like a brook
smoothly to me,
for I am the current,
over rocks and complexities
further and further from the source,
never ending,
if I let them.