Hygiene

Asthma and allergic diseases increased after children moved from free range outdoor activities to sanitized indoor playrooms and virtual playgrounds. According to the “hygiene hypothesis,” early exposure to germs and allergens is required to develop a robust immune system. As a “Mr. Mom” who prefers bike pedaling to pushing a vacuum cleaner, I played my part in boosting my budding daughter’s immune system. This little poem, written some years ago in response to Fry’s challenge (see below), is dedicated to Sarah, my now well-showered teen daughter. A request that she pose for a portrait in a mud hole was nixed in favor of a baby photo. 

Exercise 8: Two stanzas of verse running 3,6,1,4,8,4,1,6,3: subject Hygiene. (The Ode Less Traveled, Stephen Fry):

The poet's daughter

Hygiene

Germ theory
Is not my daughter’s drift.
Dirt
Is not spurned
But embraced, mouthed, eaten.
Immunity
Springs
From a primeval source –
No sniffles

She wears soil
Skin close, fingernail deep;
Loam,
Intimate friend.
Unbathed, unwiped, she is
Coated sweet with
Crust;
Earth spritzed in sunshine –
Her perfume

Jim Clark, a retired Air Force nurse living with his wife and daughter in Asheville, North Carolina, was raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee. When he’s not holding down the home front, Jim is likely to be running or biking the surrounding trails and back roads.  He enjoys capturing bytes of flora and fauna with a camera sensor and occasionally sentences a few bits to prose or poem.