May brings transition of seasons, celebration of the planting of crops, a time to honor our
mothers--there are so many rites and festivals during May around the world they are too
numerous to list.
But there is one custom, all but lost today, of which I have fond memories as a child. I
believe it was kindergarten where we kids put together a simple basket filled with a few
small flowers, hearkening back to early European settlers here in America. Those May
baskets were small and usually filled with flowers or treats and left at someone's doorstep.
The basket giver would ring the bell and run away. The person receiving the basket would
try to catch the fleeing giver. If they caught the person, a kiss was to be exchanged.
My mother suggested I take the basket to an old woman who lived across the street, and she
was so thrilled to receive it, as I was thrilled to give it. A small offering perhaps, but with a
lovely result.
Love is shown in as many different ways as there are people.
This Sketch Notes is my small offering to you this May, complete with flowers and a poem I
found that I love.














There was a Child went Forth

Walt Whitman (1891)

There was a child went forth every day;
And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became;
And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of the day, or for many years,
or stretching cycles of years.

The early lilacs became part of this child,
And grass, and white and red morning-glories, and white and red clover, and the song of the
phoebe-bird,
And the Third-month lambs, and the sow’s pink-faint litter, and the mare’s foal, and the cow’s
calf,
And the noisy brood of the barn-yard, or by the mire of the pond-side,
And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there—and the beautiful curious liquid,
And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads—all became part of him.

The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part of him;
Winter-grain sprouts, and those of the light-yellow corn, and the esculent roots of the garden,
And the apple-trees cover’d with blossoms, and the fruit afterward, and wood-berries, and the
commonest weeds by the road;
And the old drunkard staggering home from the out-house of the tavern, whence he had lately
risen,
And the school-mistress that pass’d on her way to the school,
And the friendly boys that pass’d—and the quarrelsome boys,
And the tidy and fresh-cheek’d girls—and the barefoot negro boy and girl,
And all the changes of city and country, wherever he went.

His own parents,
He that had father’d him, and she that had conceiv’d him in her womb, and birth’d him,
They gave this child more of themselves than that;
They gave him afterward every day—they became part of him.

The mother at home, quietly placing the dishes on the supper-table;
The mother with mild words—clean her cap and gown, a wholesome odor falling off her
person and clothes as she walks by;
The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, anger’d, unjust;
The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure,
The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture—the yearning and swelling heart,
Affection that will not be gainsay’d—the sense of what is real—the thought if, after all, it should
prove unreal,
The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time—the curious whether and how,
Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks?
Men and women crowding fast in the streets—if they are not flashes and specks, what are
they?

The streets themselves, and the façades of houses, and goods in the windows,
Vehicles, teams, the heavy-plank’d wharves—the huge crossing at the ferries,
The village on the highland, seen from afar at sunset—the river between,
Shadows, aureola and mist, the light falling on roofs and gables of white or brown, three miles
off,
The schooner near by, sleepily dropping down the tide—the little boat slack-tow’d astern,
The hurrying tumbling waves, quick-broken crests, slapping,
The strata of color’d clouds, the long bar of maroon-tint, away solitary by itself—the spread of
purity it lies motionless in,
The horizon’s edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt marsh and shore mud;
These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always
go forth every day.

(from Leaves of Grass)
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Thanks for visiting Sketch Notes, the
seasonal and creative page of my
personal Website:

http://www.leannmarshall.com

I enjoy reading and writing (check out
my two fiction novels, The Starfish
People and The Rendering.)

I created Sketch Notes as a fun way to
express myself poetically, but I love to
feature other writers' work with a
link back to their own Websites.
Links to Sketch Notes archives are at
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My philosophy as quoted by Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe:
"One ought, every day at least, to hear a
little song, read a good poem, see a fine
picture, and, if it were possible, to speak
a few reasonable words.”

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