Given that this past Sunday was Grandparents Day, I knew there was only one story to tell; one poem to share in celebration of this week’s Poetry Friday….
Rewind to this past April…Without feeling any modicum of gratitude (no, quite the opposite!), thanks to the scheduling demands of the PARCC exam, our elementary school was forced to abandon its traditional full-day’s Poem in Your Pocket Day festivities, in favor of a majorly scaled-back version.
Disappointed and frustrated that for weeks PARCC testing had been robbing us of so much instructional time, and knowing what Poem in Your Pocket Day had been in the past and could have been that day if not for the PARCC exam, I was feeling rather glum on Poem in Your Pocket Day morning, when the first students came to the library bearing books that needed returning.
“My grandma gave me a poem for my pocket,” a little first grader announced, absolutely glowing.
“That’s so nice,” I replied. “I hope you thanked her.”
Nod.
I continued…“Your grandma knew that she didn’t ‘have’ to give you a poem, right?” …Without waiting for a response…”She knew you would get a poem from your teacher—just like last year, right?”
“She knew. She said she just wanted me to have her poem in my pocket when I walked to school… ”
Then, her ebullience dimmed. “Somewhere along the way I lost it.”
“Oh, that is too bad,” I commiserated. “Do you know what it was about?”
“Uh-huh. A man who writes poems,” she readily told me. “…And a tree.”
I smiled, memory going into overdrive, racing through the opening words I had long ago learned by heart; truthfully, the only words I could think of having to do with a tree and a male poet. (Shame on me! I had forgotten about the Giving Tree. Good thing that wasn’t the poem she was missing.)
As dramatically as I could muster first thing in the morning, I recited:
“I think that I shall never see a poem [as] lovely as a tree.”
“Yes! That’s it,” she said. “. ..And there’s something about God at the end.”
Ceremoniously, I responded:
“Poems are made by fools like me[. ]But only God can make a tree.”
“How did you know?” she asked me, incredulously, expecting, I thought, for me to explain that I had magical powers to read the poem that she had carried in her pocket as she walked to school.
Rather, “I learned that poem a long time ago–when I was your age,” I said.
Books having been returned, and self-disclosure over, the little first grader turned to go.
“Wait!” I said.
Quickly, I found, printed out, and trimmed the extra white space from a hard copy of the online version of the poem whose first and last lines we had shared.
“Here.” I said, “It’s the poem your grandma gave you.”
After a full-smile look and “Thank you,” the little first grader checked the words (though I doubted she could read many of them), and then, with the joy of victory on her face, slipped the paper with those treasured words to Joyce Kilmer’s Trees safely into her pocket.
When she left, I felt glad I had been able to give her the words to the poem her grandma had wanted her to have in her pocket. At the same time, I felt sorry that the best I could do was a printout. Surely her grandma had printed those words for her—in her own handwriting. My printout was better than nothing, but certainly it was not a replacement, but at least, decidedly, a poor substitute.
The interaction had clearly changed my mood. If nothing else happened that day, Poem in Your Pocket Day had been an amazingly gratifying success. A little girl had proudly walked to school carrying in her pocket a poem that her grandma had chosen for her; a poem her grandma had written out for her, a poem composed by a man about a tree; a poem that ended with something about God.
And how I wished that grandma were in school, standing in front of me, so that I could move out from behind the circulation desk. How I wished I could embrace her; thank her; compliment her.
What a gift she had given her little grandbaby—a gift of loving poetry, of being personally, inextricably connected with poetry in a way that no amount of full-day Poem in Your Pocket Day events could have compared with or exceeded. …In a way, I was certain, that would forever outlive one particular Poem in Your Pocket Day.
And although I’ll never know for sure why the grandma picked that poem, I couldn’t help wondering and speculating. Had she been required to memorize it (as I had been) when she was a child? Was it her all-time favorite poem? (Can’t say it’s mine.)
It didn’t take long for me to come to the conclusion that this gutsy grandma had wanted her grandbaby’s pocket filled with words that the public school likely would not give her. Words about God. Words I’m sure this loving grandma hoped would fill not only her grandbaby’s pocket, but her mind and her heart.
Imagine! Five years of Poem in Your Pocket Day festivities and never before had I heard of a family sending a child to school with a poem. Maybe they had, and I just did not know. If that is the case, then, sorry as I am for the child, I am grateful and glad that she lost the poem her grandma had written for her.
What a blessed memory I have, thanks to that little grandbaby and her grandma.
When I printed out the hard copy of Joyce Kilmer’s poem for the little girl, I printed out a copy for myself.
And like picking up on a conversation with an old friend, I recited those words to myself, wishing my Grandmother once had written them for me, a copy I could carry in my pocket all day every day–if only no more than the last two lines.
“Poems are made by fools like me[. ]But only God can make a tree.”
God bless poets. And God bless Grandma’s.
Trees
………………..Joyce Kilmer………………
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
cbhanek 