Our Poem of the Week is about childhood and being whole and sound. “It’s one of my favorites in the world!” I might cry out if I were still a child. Well, it is — and the best part of me remembers those days with love and gratitude.

When I was a little boy, I didn’t look forward to the time when I’d be grown up. Why should I? I was learning on my own, reading, so I didn’t have to wait for age and the teachers to get around to me. I had dozens of cousins — 39, to be precise, and 20 of them lived in my town. I played ball, I roamed the woods with my dog at all seasons, I listened over the radio to my beloved Saint Louis Cardinals, and of course there was the church, right across the street from our school, and after Mass on Sunday we always went to my grandparents’ house for the afternoon and for supper, which was always macaroni and meatballs, immense plates of it, with the best sauce in the world, cooked in a big cast-iron pot. That was my father’s side of the family. My other grandparents lived a stone’s throw from our house, and I saw them constantly. “Go pick me a couple of good tomatoes from Nonno’s garden,” my mother would say, and that was a treat, but I never needed a reason to go there. None of us did. We’d just show up, as if it were our house too, as would my aunts and uncles and cousins. Sometimes in the evening the old folks would be playing pinochle — “Pinochle Pete,” my grandfather was called; or they’d be watching Gunsmoke on television. “Don’t you trust that guy, Matt!” I can hear Nana saying, because she and he were still like children. There wasn’t a drop of ill will in either one. If only I were like them now! If only I had remained a child.

Our poet this week, George Herbert, was an Anglican priest, and that meant of course that he baptized little infants, as did the Presbyterians in Scotland, but the question was certainly in the air — why do that? We don’t muddle about in controversies here at Word and Song, as it’s not the place for it, but Herbert does give us two answers. First, God graciously “antedates” in Baptism the faith that will become explicit once the child reaches the age of reason. Second, and the more fascinating of the two, is that childhood itself is the aim, even the softness and suppleness of being a baby. Herbert has Jesus’ words in mind: “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and hinder them not, for of such is the kingdom of Heaven.” He’s also thinking of the narrow way and gate: grownups piled high with all the goods and the worries of the world will be too bulky to get through, but a little boy such as I was could just whistle his way in.