One of my sons has unbounded optimism. He is a joy to be around, and he has a kind of sensitivity to others that alerts him when someone around him is struggling, even silently, with something. A month or so ago he made me a little display to hang in my bedroom that has a strip of tear-off tags with a smile on each tag. On the larger part of the paper, the part unruffled by the little strips, he wrote “Take a Smile. :)”
A few times during the month when he noticed that I was pensive or contemplative or once, irritated, he ran to my room and tore off one of the tags for me to carry around. It helped! Maybe it didn’t solve the problem or give me a breakthrough about whatever I was pondering so seriously, but it did give my spirits a boost and make me smile, if only to think that this young man was alert enough to sense my unverbalized mood and react to it.
Of course it is impossible to be happy and upbeat all the time. Sometimes really terrible things happen. Sometimes a person just doesn’t feel well, or there’s a lot of stressful connections one has to make during the course of the day, or maybe a person just can’t think of anything to smile about. Those are the times when I like to take a quick break and read a poem, even just one, to regain some perspective. For me, a poem can be like a deep breath in yoga. Poems are usually short (even a long poem might be broken down into couplets or quatrains or sonnets or some other arrangement that lends itself to natural breaks). They don’t take very long to read, but they can be distillations of thought complex enough to set the mind spinning onto a different and refreshing track. For example, this morning I was driving to an elementary school to assist in a presentation. The sun was coming up over the mountains and dyeing the sky pink. As I parked the car, an early robin chirruped from a tree near the parking lot, and across the street I could see sprouting but not yet blooming tulips. I glanced but didn’t take the time to really see those things. There was just too much on my mind. I hurried inside and set up the presentation, and then something caught my eye. It was a little card with a poem printed on it, a “pocket poems card” in preparation for April as National Poetry Month. Here is what I read:
The Saint of Trees
By Janet Wong
Dear God:
Is there a saint of trees?
A saint of flowers?
A saint of bees?
Give me the strength
To do my part
To keep our world
Your work of art.
What lovely thoughts! I decided right then, that in my Latter-day way, I can be a saint of appreciating poems, or looking at a morning sky, or a saint of noticing flowers. As we know, this whole life is a study in becoming the kind of person we want to be. Other traditions think of a saint as being the epitome or embodiment of a virtue, or someone who has lived a miraculously honorable life. But for me, I think of a saint as one who finds herself (or himself) making incremental progress in one area or another and certainly not an example of any kind of absolute perfection. Again, this poem gives me hope. I want to be able to just do a little bit, just do my part, to honor what I see that is beautiful and lovely and of good report in this marvelous world.
So when my son next tears off a little smile for me, it will remind me that maybe I’ve been so absorbed in my own petty stresses that I haven’t been noticing the small things like trees or flowers or bees. And maybe next time another poem will strike me and bring out some other thought that I can use to recharge my desire to notice those things. Poetry can do that. It is magical and thoughtful and concise and sometimes very simple. Children who are exposed to poetry can become clearer and stronger thinkers! Here is a very short list, in no particular order, of some of the many, many books of poems and novels written as poetry. Read a poem, and see where it takes you!
The President”s Stuck in the Bathtub : poems about the presidents, by Susan Katz
Rah, Rah, Radishes! : a vegetable chant, by April Pulley Sayre
The Red Pencil, by Andrea Davis Pinkney
Tap Dancing on the Roof : sijo (poems), by Linda Sue Park
Over the Candlestick : classic nursery rhymes and the real stories behind them, by Michael Montgomery
A World of Words : an ABC of quotations, by Tobi Tobias
Imaginary Animals : poetry and art for young people, edited by Charles Sullivan
The Lightning Dreamer, by Margarita Engle
This is the Key to the Kingdom, by Diane Worfolk Allison
Words with Wings, by Nikki Grimes
The Rainbow Hand : poems about mothers and children, by Janet S. Wong