If | Thinking Through My Lens

For a whole month we have been reading and writing poetry in my first grade classroom. Poetry is not specific to April in our classroom, but the intensity increases as we participate in National Poetry Month. Yesterday we read some of the poems from the book, If I Could Choose a Best Day: Poems of Possibility, noticing that all the poems start with the word “if.” We focused our attention on the poem that book is titled for, noting the kind of information the poet included.

After the reading and the talking, priming the pump for these young poets, they opened their notebooks and began to write. I asked them to start with the word if…but the topic could be anything. I encouraged the use of metaphor, action, color, and senses, but didn’t require any particular approach. If students were stuck, I pointed them back to the beginning, “If I could choose the best day…”

There is something about this poem, written by a 7 year old that inspires me. And the young poet was so excited about the “unusual metaphor.” (If you missed it, it is the part about blowing up.)

If I could choose a best day

I would choose a yes day

My mom would say yes to everything

I would be so happy

I think I would blow up!

I love the rhythm of those first two lines…and the idea of that “yes day” sounds amazing. I asked the poet if he’d had a yes day, but no, it was something that came out of thinking about a best day.

I can’t get the idea of a yes day out of my mind. So I let some words pour into a poem of my own, inspired by this one written by a first grader. Maybe it’s a call to courage for myself. Here’s my unedited draft:

Say yes

to something that scares you

that makes your heart pound

and your breath catch

say yes

to an adventure

you couldn’t imagine

last week

last year

Will you jump from a plane

hike a hidden canyon

dance on a bridge

or sing outside the shower?

Say yes

today

tomorrow

right now

@kd0602

If you could choose a best day…or have a yes day, what would it be?

Last week I came across a list of someone’s favorite children’s books of 2025 and was immediately drawn to If I Could Choose a Best Day. It’s a collection of poems that all begin with the word If, edited by Irene Latham and Charles Waters. I do love a great collection of poetry–especially a collection that includes living poets. I’m sure that no one is surprised that I needed to buy yet another poetry book to read to my students.

Before reading the book today, I had asked my students, as part of our morning message, what poem they might write if the poem began with the words If I… Their imaginations went right away to ideas like If I could fly… and If I met a unicorn…

After recess, it was time to read the book. (It had arrived on Saturday and I read through the poems over the weekend). Like Welcome to the Wonder House (that we read last week and I wrote about here), the book is organized into different categories of poems. They include: Everyday Magic, The Power of You, Kinfolk and Companions, and Anything is Possible. I read a variety of poems from each section. My students recognized poets we had read before and they noticed that all the poems began with the word If, but only a few began with If I. There were poems about pencils, poems about bikes, poems about birds, and poems about words. There were poems about friendship, poems about wishes, and poems about peace.

And then it was time for some writing. Under the influence of the possibilities offered by the word If, my students began to craft their own poems. I love when ideas pour rather than trickle. Ideas were flowing, but there was only enough time to hear a few students read an early draft. I’m hoping to have time to go back to these poems tomorrow.

So in the spirit of following the If… Here is my own early draft:

If the ocean were my bedroom

my dreams would be salty and big enough

to hold a blue whale

balancing the earth on a single puff of breath

before diving back into the depths of sleep

If the ocean were my bedroom

I would be lullabied by sea birds

and rocked to sleep by sea stars dancing on tiny tube feet

and wake

to the beauty of biodiversity

and possibility of interconnectedness

lessons learned in watery dreams

waiting to be lived

today

@kd0602

You’ll notice that I have not included a title for my poem. Stefani over at Verselove has reminded us today that titles matter and influence our reading of poems. Any suggestions for this one of mine?