Last week as my fifth/sixth grade students at Ann Arbor Open School were discussing poetry's relationship with the human body, I received a sudden, surprise visit. Three envoys from the first/second grade class next door hurried into the room, handed me two paper parcels, then left.

I couldn't look into them immediately — I had to get back to leading discussion on Lucia Perillo's poem, "To My Big Nose," in which she compares said nose to a gryphon, a pink shadow, the squeaking wheels of a laundry line and a knife blade slicing into her face's future.

But I was intrigued by the mystery, so as soon as I got my students composing their own odes to body parts, I unfolded the pages that the first/second graders had handed me.

A bit of context: back in March I led two sessions per week of poetry conversations and exercises with the next door first/second grade classroom. I did this partly in conjunction with my Writer-in-Residence gig, and partly as a way of parent-volunteering in my daughter's classroom.

The first and second graders really got into it and wrote some wonderful poems, many of which I got to hear them share aloud at the end of our sessions.

On the last day in March, the class worked together to write me a very sweet poem on a huge blue roll of paper, in which I was called "better than peppers" and, improbably, "better than my mom." (One of those was written by my daughter.) (Hint: it wasn't the mom one.)

The visit last week was an outgrowth of those sessions. Two students, working independently and without any assignment, decided to write poems and give them to me. They're both pretty wonderful, so I snuck back over to ask the two young poets if I could share their work here. Lucky for y'all, they both said yes.

This poem is by Luke:


Spring


Spring is a time

when leaves start

to bloom sweet

smells fill the

town it is

good kids play

and run around

it is all good.

And this poem is by Aliyah:


A Poem


A poem is a picture, a thought, a mind. A poem glides over the

water, the sea and ocean. A poem gives us light, love, and peace.


Naturally, when the fifth/sixth graders finished writing and we reached the "open mic" portion of the class, I started things off by reading both Luke's and Aliyah's poems. The fifth and sixth graders responded to these poems the same way that adults often respond to their own poems: they couldn't believe such young poets were capable of such wise and lovely words.

Scott Beal is a stay-at-home dad who is wrapping up his third year as Dzanc Writer-in-Residence at Ann Arbor Open School.