Edgar Allen Poe Eat Your Heart Out… I Can Make Word Music Too.

Mama has been on a kick with reading to me lately. It’s mostly a man named Dr. Seuss who makes sounds match up (Mama calls this rhyming but it sounds like music to me) and Goodnight Moon, but today she read a poem that she said was my middle name called “Annabel Lee.” This really sad man wrote it she said, and because of that it was a really sad poem, but Mama says that it’s happier than a lot of what he did. I sure am glad that she picked this one then, because this was about as sad as I can take at my age.

Mama said that Daddy used to work on a boat with the same name, which is why he named me that, and she said that her Daddy, my Grandpa, used to read it to her when she was little like me. She called this a tradition. I think that I like those.

The poem was beautiful even though it was sad, and it felt kind of like when we were in that boat going back and forth and back and forth. Mama says it’s hard to write poems because they have to line up just right, but I think that I can do it if I try really hard. I only know this one, so I’m going to have to make it sound the same.

Dorian Annabel Dean

It was many and many a day ago,
In a kingdom small as me,
That a baby there lived that you may know
Named Dorian Annabel Dean;
And this baby she lived with no other thought
Than to love and to be loved by we.

I am a child and so are we all,
In this kingdom small as me:
But we love with a love that is more than love—
My Mama my Daddy and me;
With a love that the angels who look from above
Watch over them and me.

And this was the reason that, days ago,
In this kingdom as small as me,
The sun it shone on us all, warming
Wee Dorian Annabel Dean;
So that my Mama and Daddy came,
To enjoy the sun with me,
To put me in my Mama’s arms,
In this kingdom small as me.

The angels, who watched over them in Heaven,
Were protecting them and me—
Yes! That is the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom small as me)
That the sun came out of the clouds by day,
Warming wee Dorian Annabel Dean.

Oh our love it by far was stronger by far than the love
Of many much older than we—
And many much “wiser” than we—
And all of the angels in Heaven above,
And our God who looks down on us three,
Forever connects Mama and Daddy’s souls
To wee Dorian Annabel Dean.

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of my Mama, my Daddy and me;
And the stars always rise, and they know the bright eyes
Of wee Dorian Annabel Dean —
And so, all the nighttime, I lie down by the side,
Of my Mama—my Daddy—my life and my pride,
In my kingdom as small as me,
My Mama and Daddy and me.