Number 3: David McCord "This Is My Rock"

This is my rock
And here I run
To steal the secret of the sun.

This is my rock
And here come I
Before the night has swept the sky.

This is my rock
This is the place
I meet the evening face to face.

-David McCord




Hap notes: David Thompson Watson McCord (1897-1997) originally wanted to be a scientist and, as all lovers of poetry know, it's not that great a leap to go from physics and chemistry to poetry. He is known for writing what is often called "children's poetry" which one hopes does not belittle his reputation but it more than likely does and more's the pity.

He's got ump-skumpty-umps honorary degrees (read: 22) and even received Harvard's very first honorary degree in Humane Letters. Harvard should have named the Yard after him. He was a tireless and effective fundraiser for them as director of the Harvard College Fund. He edited many books of "children's" poetry, wrote poetry and essays and, after he retired from fundraising, taught advanced writing classes at Harvard.

He was born in New York but, as a child he lived for a long time with an uncle in Portland, Oregon, and I have always believed that's where the rock in the poem was.

This poem is so special to me I don't know that I can adequately verbalize it. I read it when I was around 8 years old and it kick-started my life-long love affair with poetry. (I read it in the classic Untermeyer collection "The Golden Treasury of Poetry.") The poem gave me that fizziness you feel in the blood that you get when a poem is really good. I still get it when I read it.

Also, I had a rock too- the one you stand on when you're a kid and see the extraordinary colors of a November sunset and you feel the cold wind brushing your face and you know that the world was made just for you and you were going to be lonely a lot of the time and that's okay because the sunset has filled you with a loving bravery.

Here's something else McCord wrote, "One of my teachers told me: 'Never let a day go by without looking at three beautiful things.' I try to do that and find it isn't difficult. The sky, in all its weathers is, for me, the first of these three things."

Here's a good McCord quote, too: " We have to learn that just to live is to acknowledge a kinship with poetry. There are many words for poetry, but the one important word for it is rhythm. The wind in the grass and the leaves of the trees and the flame that rises and falls-- or the waves on the shore, a bird's call, a thunder shower, or anything you care about in nature is full of rhythm. Even an earthquake, for that matter. That's all part of poetry."