Welcome back to the Daily Poem. I'm David Kern, and today is Tuesday, April 13, 2021.

Today's poem is from an old friend here on the podcast. We've shared a number of her poems with you,

but it's one that I ran across recently and really did want to share with you this one as well.

It is by Rina Espionat. She is a Dominican-American poet who was born in January of 1932.

She, of course, is also a translator, and she has translated the works of Robert Frost and Richard Wilbur into Spanish.

So she's a very gifted poet, one of our favorites. And the poem that i'm going to read to you today is called

things that go and this is how it goes things that go hoop and arrow wheel and dart kite and rocket

stream and heart fan and motor mill and train, water wheel, remembered pain.

Summer, autumn, winter, spring, desire, and desired thing, suns that burn, and rains that weep, children you once rocked to sleep.

So this is a classic Rina Espyat in the sense that by the time you get to the end of the poem,

you are, your heartstrings have been pulled.

Her poems are so pleasant and then they become heartbreaking.

And then you spend some time with them.

And maybe they're not as heartbreaking as they seem on the surface.

What they definitely are is more complex than they seem on the surface, I think.

And this is a great example.

It seems like a simple poem, right?

Structurally, it's a relatively simple poem.

We've got four stanzas, four lines each, so 16 total lines.

And we've got A, B, C, B, Rhyme Schemes throughout.

So, Arrow, DART, Rocket, Heart, first stanza, motor, train, wheel, pain, and the second stanza, and so forth.

If you're not careful, it could get a little sing-songy.

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