&
Straight A’s
My parents and I
don’t talk about grades.
It’s understood.
I will get A’s.
They never say what
they want me to do.
I wish they wouldI wish they knew.
-Janet S. Wong
Write about a radish
Too many people write
about the moon.
The night is black
The stars are small and high
The clock unwinds
its ever-ticking tune
Hills gleam dimly
Distant nighthawks cry.
A radish rises in the waiting sky.
- Karla Kuskin
Ice cubes
in a glass.
The sun comes out.
Alas.
A loss of form,
of firmness
attributed
to warmness.
-Jane Yolen
We Could Be Friends
We could be friends
Like friends are supposed to be.
You, picking up the telephone
Calling me.
to come over and play
or take a walk,
finding a place
to sit and talk,
or just goof around
Like friends do,
Me, picking up the telephone
Calling you.
- Myra Cohn Livingston
Computer
A computer is a machine.
A machine is interesting.
A machine is useful.
I can study a computer.
I can use it.
Who made it?
Human beings made it.
I am a human being.
I am warm. I am wise.
I have empathies for animals
and people.
I conduct a computer.
A computer does not conduct me.
- Gwendolyn Brooks
Changes
Albums, tapes
and thin CD’s.
Music plays
on all of these.
Through the years
the styles have changed,
the look, the size,
it’s rearranged,
but one thing always
stays the samethe love
of the beat
is the name
of the game
-Rebecca Kai Dotlich
Into Mother’s Slide Trombone
Into Mother’s slide trombone
Liz let fall her ice-cream cone.
Now when marching, Mother drips
Melting notes and chocolate chips.
-X.J. Kennedy
Doors
An open door says,
“Come in.”
A shut door says,
“Who are you?”
Shadows and ghosts
go through shut doors.
If a door is shut
and you want it shut,
why open it?
If a door is open
and you want it open,
why shut it?
Doors forget
but only doors know what it is
doors forget.
-Carl Sandburg
Think About Wheels
Think about wheels
any time you like.
Any little wheel you see is
worth looking at.
The sun is a wheel,
the moon is a wheel.
Many a night star is a wheel.
And in your head,
in many little places behind
your blinking wonderful
eyes, you can find,
if you try,
ten thousand wheels
within wheels.
-Carl Sandburg
In the Neighborhood
We drove past
our old house today.
The redwood fence
is warped and gray.
The tree I planted grew so
tall
it makes our house
look plain and small.
When we lived there,
it was the best.
Now it seems just like
the rest.
-Janet S. Wong
Under a Telephone Pole
I am a copper wire slung in the air.
Slim against the sun I make not even
a clear line of shadow.
Night and day I keep singing
-humming and thrumming;
It is love and war and money; it is
the fighting and the tears, the
work and the want,
Death and laughter
of men and women passing
through me,
carrier of your speech,
In the rain and the wet dripping,
in the dawn and the shine drying,
a copper wire.
-Carl Sandburg
Daffodils
They put on
a little show
simply by being
so yellow.
Their stems
darkly green
against the
faded brown barn
-Ralph Fletcher
At The Dark’s Edge
Sister tree,
deaf and dumb and blind,
and we have ears to hear,
have eyes for sight,
and yet our sister tree can find,
fumbling deaf and groping blind,
the field before her and the wood
behind,
what we can’t…..
light.
- Archibald MacLeish
Mailboxes
When I step from the forest
onto the hard black asphalt
my eyes start playing tricks.
That fire hydrant
turns into a toddler
dressed to the gills
in a snug winter snowsuit.
See those mailboxes over there?
To me they look like old people
dancing slowly cheek-to-cheek.
-Ralph Fletcher
Stream
No place better than a stream
to think out a tough decision
or just sit back and dream.
No one built the winding paths
that stream waters follow
except water and rock and land.
Stream decisions take time
and water is world famous
for stopping to change its mind.
-Ralph Fletcher
Hurt no living thing:
Ladybug nor butterfly,
Nor moth with dusty wing,
Nor cricket chirping cheerily,
Nor grasshopper so light of leap,
Nor dancing gnat, nor bettle fat,
Nor harmless worms that creep.
- Christina Rossetti
The Dollar Dog
I had a dollar dog named Spot.
He wasn’t much, but he was a lot
Of kinds of dog, plus a few parts flea,
Seven parts yapper, and seventy-three
or seventy-four parts this-and-that.
The only thing he wasn’t was cat.
He was collie-terrierspaniel-hound,
and everything else
they have at the pound.
Yes, some might call him a mongrel,
but to me he was thoroughbred,
pedigreed mutt.
A middle-sized nothing,
or slightly smaller,
but a lot of kinds to get for a dollar.
-John Ciardi
Help me not compare
myself to others, so
that I may appreciate
my own uniqueness.
Help me truly accept
myself just as I am,
so that I may sing the
song in my heart…
for no one else has my
song to sing…my gift
to give.
-Carol Hamblet Adams
Bibliography
Adams, Carol Hamblet. My Beautiful, Broken Shell. Attleboro, MA: Eagle Press, 1996.
Fletcher, Ralph. Ordinary Things. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers,
1997.
Janeczko, Paul B. ed. The Place My Words Are Looking For. New York:
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 1990.
Prelutsky, Jack, ed. The Beauty of the Beast. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.
Sandburg, Carl. Poems for Children. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.
Strickland, Michael R., ed. My Own Song. Honesdale, PA: Wordsong Boyds Mills Press,
1997.
Wong, Janet S. A Suitcase of Seaweed. NewYork: Margaret K. McElderry Books, 1996.
Yolen, Jane, ed. Once Upon Ice. Honesdale, PA: Wordsong Boyds Mills Press, 1997.