Today marks the second annual Poem in Your Pocket Day.  The idea is to keep a poem in your pocket all day long and share it with friends, family, students, and others you happen to meet.  Since we can’t share a poem with you face to face, we are posting one on the blog.

Read to them

Before the time is gone and darkness fills the room again

Read to them

What if it were meant to be that you were the one, the only one

Who could unlock the doors and share the magic with them?

What if others have been daunted by scheduling demands,

District objectives, or one hundred other obstacles?

Read to them

Be confident that Charlotte has been able to teach them about friendship,

And Horton about self-worth;

Be sure the Skin Horse has been able to deliver his message.

Read to them

Let them meet Tigger, Homer Price, Aslan, and Corduroy;

Take them to Oz, Prydain, and Camazotz;

Show them a Truffula Tree.

Read to them

Laugh with them at Soup and Rob,

And cry with them when the Queen of Terabithia is lost forever;

Allow the Meeker family to turn loyalty, injustice, and war

Into something much more than a vocabulary lesson.

What if you are the one, the only one, with the chance to do it?

What if this is the critical year for even one child?

Read to them

Before the time, before the chance, is gone.

This poem has been in our files for a number of years.  A colleague who, like us, is a book-lover passed it along.  We are not sure of the original author, but value the message.  Share this poem (and a book) with someone today!  More information about Poem in Your Pocket Day can be found at http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/406