R.E. Slater - Pockets Full of Sunshine

Pockets Full of Sunshine

by R.E. Slater

Pockets full of sunshine,

Bursting all around,
Jeckel, Heckle,
We all fall down!

Hear the little fat bird,

Singing on the fence,

Chirping his dailies,

Plimp, plump, plamp!

Gaily we prance about,

Cheerily we sing,

Nothing and nonsense,

Every day and spring.

Find him, seek her!

See how they run!

Following after,

The bright orbed sun!

Dimples and lashes,

Eyes full of rain,

Falling, falling,

Let laughter come.

Tra la, dee la, tra la, dee la,

Tra dum, tra dum, tra dum!
Hum the roses and daisies
Filling glad hearts with tunes.

Every day’s a new day,

Yesterday is past –

How do we catch the sun,

Holding firm and fast?

Rhymes and riddles,

Feiddle, Fidle, Fum,

Sticks and thimbles,

Seiddle, Sidle, Sum.

Rolling down the grassy hills,

Lying in the sun,

Listening to a summer’s day,

Humming golden tunes.

Shouting, seeking,

Beating all about,

Running, jumping,

School bell’s rung!

Quick! Let us run away,

Upon the dappled paths!

Hiding and seeking,

Within its willow’d stays!¹

Shouting, Singing,

All about the yards,

Crying, Calling,

All is well!

Hark! Bursts a yellow lark,
In breathless beat upon its wings!

Breaking across the bluing skies,

Flushed its grainy fields!

Displacing all somber thoughts,

Fled upon their pleasures,

Startling any wayward steps,

Lost upon their treasures.

Away we go across the fields,

Across the burning lanes,

Through the dales and o’er the hills,

Nothing lasts forever....

Till chanced upon a simple shrike,

To hear its cajoling laughter –
Fly away, fly away,

Let all be done at last!

Upon our pondering steps,

Brimming wonderous hopes,

Are dashed fair dreams' elixirs,

O' mobling² streams' lost wander.

Where nowhere lies the mocking jay,

All pleasant voices muted,

Nor gladden feet to daily strike,

Once sunny days and fields.

Dashes, Dashes,

Even stroke³ has come!

Curses, Curses,
Home we must run!

Sunlight has thinned

Towards evening's hush,

The fields grow dim,

The bell has rung.

Homeward drifts the drawing day,

Our playful songs have faded -

Softly echoing dream-lit chambers;

Jeckel, Heckle, we all fall down...

On a summer's day.

- R.E. Slater
January 28-29, 2014

¹as draped willow branches brushing the earth

²shrouded, like a monk’s cloaked head

³re the gathering evening dusk

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved

Poetic Analysis
by ChatGPT-5

Pockets Full of Sunshine unfolds as a process-poem - one that moves not by narrative causality but by rhythm, repetition, and gradual tonal shift. Its governing logic is not story but becoming: the way sound, play, and time slowly transform without announcing their turning points.

1. Sound as Primary Meaning

The poem begins in chant and nonsense - Jeckel, Heckle, plimp, plump, plamp, Feiddle, Fidle, Fum. These are not ornamental syllables but structural forces. They mimic the pre-reflective world of childhood, where meaning is carried as much by sound, cadence, and bodily movement as by semantic clarity.

Early stanzas lean heavily on:

• reduplication and rhyme,

• trochaic verse of two syllables, strong and weak (We all fall down!),

• circular refrains,

• and communal voice (“we”).

This establishes a world governed by play, presence, and immediacy, rather than memory or analysis.

2. Gradual Gravitational Shift

Rather than a single rupture, the poem undergoes a slow thickening of gravity. The sun remains present, but it becomes something to follow, then something to question, and finally something that fades. Birds shift symbolically - from playful singers to solitary figures and finally to silence. The school bell, first playful, later becomes a signal of return and limit.

Crucially, this transition is not moralized. Childhood is not “lost” in tragedy; it is outgrown through process. The poem honors continuity rather than rupture.

3. Memory Replaces Immediacy

Midway through, the poem subtly changes its stance. Action yields to recollection. The chant-like forms begin to carry distance rather than presence. The nursery rhyme returns not as lived play, but as echoing refrain.

This culminates in the final movement, where language itself softens and lengthens, preparing the reader for dusk - not only of day, but of a phase of life.

4. The Final Verse Structures: 4 × 4 × 5

The closing form is deliberate:

• First quatrain: percussive inevitability (Dashes, Dashes…)

• Second quatrain: atmospheric threshold (sun thinning, bell ringing)

• Final quintain: reflective memory-space

The move from fours to five subtly breaks the poem’s learned symmetry, mirroring the way childhood rhythms can no longer fully contain adult awareness. The poem does not end where it began; it widens.

5. The Completed Ending (Why It Works)

The final stanza now reads:

Homeward drifts the drawing day,
Our playful songs have faded —
Softly echoing dream-lit chambers;
Jeckel, Heckle, we all fall down…
On a summer’s day.

This ending succeeds because it resolves without closure:

• drawing day holds both temporal ending and sketch-like memory.

• dream-lit chambers evokes the bedrooms of the mind, and half-sleep - interior spaces where sound lingers without any grounding source.

• The chant returns as echo, not action.

• The ellipsis allows the rhyme to trail into memory-time.

• The final line does not conclude the poem; it releases it into the remembered, lingering seasons of life.

Nothing is reclaimed. Nothing is erased. The music simply changes rooms.

6. Thematic Achievement

Ultimately, Pockets Full of Sunshine is not nostalgic. It is processual. It recognizes that joy, play, and innocence are real precisely because they are impermanent - and that their disappearance does not signal loss so much as reflective transformation.

The poem ends not in darkness, but in sleep.

Not in silence, but in echo.
Not finality, but continuation -
carrying softly along.