Serendipity

On my 12th birthday my mom gave me a copy of Alice Walker's book of poetry, Horses Make A Landscape More Beautiful, with an inscription and two of the poems marked especially for me... Every year that I've been a teacher I use one of those poems, "How Poems Are Made/A Discredited View," with my class during our poetry unit. I change many things I do each year but never this poem... Just last week I read it with my current 9th graders and relayed the story of my mom's gift.

Today, I walked into the library for our weekly independent reading period with my students and there was a book on the floor beside a table. I asked a student if it was his book and he said no, that he hadn't even noticed it. I bent over to pick it up and it was nothing other than a copy of Horses Make A Landscape More Beautiful. What are the odds of all the books in the library? Dunno but a nice moment to remember that sometimes the odds are on our side. I opened it up to a random poem and rather than one that I recall from my childhood, I landed on a poem called "Listen" that begins, "Listen, / I never dreamed / I would learn to...."

Thanks, Ma!