May--The Credo

by Robert Fulghum

All I really need to know
about how to live and what to do and how to be
I learned in kindergarten.
Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain,
but there in the sandpile at Sunday School.
These are the things I learned:

Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.

Live a balanced life--
learn some and think some
and draw and paint and sing and dance and play
and work every day some.

Take a nap every afternoon.

When you go out into the world,
watch out for traffic,
hold hands,
and stick together.

Be aware of wonder.
Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup:
The roots go down and the plant goes up
and nobody really knows how or why,
but we are all like that.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice
and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup--they all die
So do we.

And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books
and the first word you learned--
the biggest word of all-LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere.
The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation.
Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Think what a better world it would be if
we all--the whole world--
had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon
and then lay down with our blankies for a nap.
Or if all governments had as a basic policy
to always put things back where they found them
and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true,
no matter how old you are--
when you go out into the world,
it is best to hold hands and stick together.


This poem is for May because it is the month that our government has finished revising its budget proposal. Personally, I have no faith in our government, it's members, or its intentions. Robert Fulgham's cynical view towards government reflects my own. The Credo is a list poem. It is a list of childhood rules that one learned at a young age. However, Fulgham gave it a deeper meaning by commenting on how adults (such as those in the government who make important decisions) do not abide by these rules which they were taught at a very young age.
The periods after every line in the second stanza serve to stress each rule more than the lines in stanzas without the extra punctuation. They make the rules feel more obsolete and more important. It gives the obvious blunders of the people mentioned later in the poem more weight. Fulgham's uses punctuation to put emphasis on different ideas and to give the poem a dynamic structure.
I liked best how this poem is open to all readers, but has hidden meanings and comments which can be understood by older or more educated readers.