January 1st and the Possibility of 365 Poems

On my shelf I have four poetry anthologies which provide you with a poem for each day of the year. If you know someone beginning their career as a teacher this year one of these would be a fabulous gift or if you work in a school library why not use these as a way to share poems with the teachers in your school or share one each day in your library.

 I decided to look at 1st January and here is a poem that appealed to me from A Whale of a Time:

The First Book by Rita Dove

Open it.

Go ahead, it won’t bite.

Well … maybe a little.

More a nip, like. A tingle.

It’s pleasurable, really.

You see, it keeps on opening.

You may fall in.

Sure, it’s hard to get started;

remember learning to use

knife and fork? Dig in:

you’ll never reach bottom.

It’s not like it’s the end of the world–

just the world as you think

you know it.

I am the seed that grew the tree

And Everything will be glad to see you