The Day I Fell in Love with Poetry

I showed this video, Why we read and write poetry, to my students as an Invitation to Write. They weren't exactly inspired, but I was.

I was in second grade -- Sister Flaviana's class.  At the time I was still a lover of school, and I particularly liked my second grade teacher.  This was St. Mark's school in Cleveland, Ohio, where everyone walked to school and went home for lunch.

It was a rainy day and I had come back early from lunch.  Guess I just couldn't wait to get back to the classroom.  My teacher told me to sit quietly and read. The book: A.A. Milne's The World of Christopher Robin.

I had never seen anything like this collection. It was POETRY.  I had picked it up because I had another Milne book that contained stories of Pooh and his friends.  I loved Piglet and Eeyore and wanted more. This was quite different.

 I remember puzzling my way through the various poems, many that had references to things like "sixpence" and "market square" and other English-y terms for which I had no background knowledge.  Then I began to read:

If I had a ship,
I'd sail my ship,
I'd sail my ship
Through Eastern seas;
Down to a beach where the slow waves thunder --
The green curls over and the white falls under --
Boom! Boom! Boom!
On the sun-bright sand.
Then I'd leave my ship and I'd land,
And climb the steep white sand,
And climb to the trees,
The six dark trees,
The coco-nut trees on the cliff's green crown --
Hands and knees
To the coco-nut trees,
Face to the cliff as the stones patter down,
Up, up up, staggering, stumbling,
Round the corner where the rock is crumbling,
Round this shoulder,
Over this boulder,
Up to the top where the six trees stand...

This was something I KNEW.  Climbing cliffs, making friends with trees, floating toy boats (sailing my ship) in the Rocky River, the sounds of the Lake Erie waves and "sun-bright sand" on our trips to Cedar Point.  Being in nature was second nature to me, and the best times of my young life had been outdoors.

The rain continued to pour. The classroom was quiet, even as other students returned, soaking wet from walking back to school in the rain. Then I read the final lines, the ones that nailed poetry to my heart forever. It is about being on top of the world. Being the ONLY ONE. As a girl in a house with four boys, the final line was made just for me, because in my experience life was never about just me. So what Milne wrote was radical and revolutionary to my 7-year-old mind.  Since then, I've come to realize all poetry that moves us has that gift.

And there would I rest, and lie,
My chin in my hands, and gaze
At the dazzle of sand below,
And the green waves curling slow,
And the grey-blue distant haze
Where the sea goes up to the sky...

And I'd say to myself as I looked so lazily down at the sea:
"There's nobody else in the world, and the world was made for me."