by Howard Seeman
So, here my dear daughter:
I give you this little money now for xmas.
But look what I get?
More Jaimelyn!
I got more Jaimelyn each time I gave you the bottle,
Or a tickle.
Or baby food making believe the spoon was an airplane into your mouth.
Telling you things that felt awesome to you,
or giving you the how to do quadratic equations.
As you grew into no-more-little-Jaimelyn.
Look what I got: big Jaimelyn.
Yup: giving is getting.
Here, with this letter to you: I do it again:
As I send it, I imagine your smile.
Ah, I Get !
Yup, giving is getting.
That is what you do up on stage: performing is giving-is-getting,
or listening to Andrew is
giving-is-getting.
And giving gets more getting than trying to get.
Here, in this little poem, pulling up more of me to do this giving to you,
I get: more me.
Ah, again: giving is getting.
I can feel you get this.
So glad you get it; this gives me a lot of GOT that you get it.
Now I get, you get, we get: we get GOT together!
A-fast-hugging-each-other-got.
Wow, what a wide got we got from such short little giving.
See? I’m right:
Giving is getting.
Howard Seeman, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, CUNY; Certified Life-Coach. Author of collected poems: “Unlike Almost Everything Else in the Universe” and Memoirs: “You/Me: Getting Under Limbo Bars”. In private practice at: [email protected]