Gifted

She likes the words coffee and zoom! 

She doesn't want to write poems or read poems or sit still. Last week as the other youngsters wrote and copied their favorite verse, the 10-year-old stood apart, defiant. 

So we wrote together, just the two of us. Simple things: A word for each letter of her name, such as kind, intelligent, energetic . . . She unfolded slowly, said she would share our poem with her father, then asked to take a book of poems home. 

The next day, she raced to me, her face flushed as she rattled through her backpack. "This is for you," she said. In her careful script, on special paper, she had copied a poem we had read together the day before. 

This confirms my love for Poem in Your Pocket Day. You never know what a poem will plant, what seed will grow.