Going Back To Kindergarten Poem by RIC BASTASA

Wittgenstein
went back to kindergarten

trying to figure out
how a language is learned

to know that language is born
not with a word or two

but in a cluster of sentences
like the birth of a baby

that comes not with spare parts
of hands and legs and toes

but as a whole coming out
from the womb and with a

spank from this world
cries to let you know that

it is alive and has already
some feelings and thoughts

of its own. Like us, we learn
the language of love not on

a piecemeal basis, we know
love when we are accepted

as a whole person, not as
bits and pieces and chunks

and cold cuts, but as tomato
sauce garnished with cheese

and mint and rosemary and
meatballs and salt and pepper.

Wittgenstein went back
to kindergarten
not as a kid but as a philosopher.