Early Art

Abraham at five would make a single line
Across the paper and tell me
That Buzz Lightyear had just flown off.
Fifty pages a day, sometimes, until
He went through a ream of paper,
A box of reams.

At six, he drew stick figures. Stick figures
Doing everything conceivable.
Some of them wore hats.
Looking back, I can see the development:
A curved line to suggest a hill
Behind the snowman;
A striped stick figure that I know is Hobbes.

I pulled out his stack of early art today,
And he went through it all for the first time
In years. Paper after paper, examining each
With the eye of a developing artist,
Patient with the artist he was then,
Not discarding the whole stack in boredom,
But rescuing fewer than forty sheets
From all those hours of diligent effort.