(another beauty from the National Geographic website)
POEM #7 - A.A. Milne (1882-1956)

I was delighted to discover an A.A. Milne book "When We Were Very Young" at a local thrift shop last year. Turns out the man best known for Winnie the Pooh and his companions wrote some delightful children's poetry, too. He seemed to have a special gift for getting inside a child's mind and speaking to his imagination.

He also wrote The Magic Hill, about a princess "blessed" by fairies so that wherever she walks, flowers spring up. So she plays all day on her own hill, and in the evening the other children pick her flowers for their mothers. This is one of Kathryn's and my favorites.

Kathryn and Alex often pretend the Wal-Mart parking lot is a deep ocean, full of all kinds of beasts (the cars, you know). We carefully traverse the dangers, arriving safely in produce. And of course we all know how children are obsessed from ages past with "not stepping on the cracks!" Well, A.A. Milne knew that, too. Here you go.

Whenever I walk in a London street,
I'm ever so careful to watch my feet;
And I keep in the squares,
And the masses of bears,
Who wait at the corners all ready to eat
The sillies who tread on the lines of the street,
Go back to their lairs,
And I say to them, "Bears,
Just look how I'm walking in all of the squares!"

And the little bears growl to each other, "He's mine,
As soon as he's silly and steps on a line,"
And some of the bigger bears try to pretend
That they came round the corner to look for a friend;
And they try to pretend that nobody cares
Whether you walk on the lines or squares.
But only the sillies believe their talk;
It's ever so portant how you walk,
And it's ever so jolly to call out, "Bears,
Just watch me walking in all the squares!"