I’ve been visiting elementary school classes to teach poetry since I was in grad school, and little kids don’t have to be reminded or taught to wonder. They naturally are curious and astonished by cloud shapes, leaf shapes—bugs and birds—they have a gabillion questions for me about making a line of poetry, about the planet, and they naturally speak with metaphor. I’ll never forget one sweet boy who missed his dead mom and said, “I have a cloud in my pocket,” instead of saying I feel sad.
