Invite chil­dren and teens to walk in the park
sit under a tree
look
lis­ten
enjoy
the nat­ur­al
rhythms
of nature’s
music.

Invite them to choose any poet­ry book, fun­ny or seri­ous,
what­ev­er they wish, metered and rhymed, or a nov­el
born wild, then released
in free verse.

Let young peo­ple reach their own answers
to the ques­tion: how does this poem
make you feel?

Give them per­mis­sion to be hon­est.
There is no right or wrong answer, no path­way, no map.
Each poem can yield var­i­ous mean­ings, depend­ing on the age,
mood, expe­ri­ence, and day­dreams of the read­er.
Please do not ask that oth­er dread­ed ques­tion:
what does this poem mean?

It’s a chal­lenge that ter­ri­fies every­one,
even adults who pic­ture them­selves fail­ing to com­plete
an impos­si­ble fairy tale quest.

Assign­ing only one mean­ing to a poem
is like spin­ning straw into gold, it can’t be done,
there’s no alche­my for sim­pli­fy­ing
the pow­er­ful beau­ty
of musi­cal lan­guage
into some­thing
less entranc­ing
than hon­est
emo­tions.

Show the child how to see rhyth­mic pat­terns
of vow­el rhymes, and help them find times
when inter­nal rhymes sound
like the chimes of bells
echo­ing with­in
open spaces
after line breaks
between stan­zas
between pages.
Those open spaces are the mag­i­cal places
where the minds of a poet and read­er
rise up to meet
in midair
both
free
to see
new pos­si­bil­i­ties, per­haps a poem or sketch
scrib­bled by a child, in response to the fin­ished verse
print­ed in a book.

Scat­ter a trea­sury of paper, pens, pen­cils
just in case a wave of inspi­ra­tion
helps one of the chil­dren
or teenagers
feel like answer­ing
a hope­ful ques­tion:
how does this poem
make you feel?

Your exam­ple will be the dif­fer­ence
between a life­time of metro­pho­bia (the fear of poet­ry)
and a life­time in sun­light or shade, read­ing, dream­ing,
and maybe even begin­ning to scrib­ble the future’s
musi­cal verses.