A week ago today marked the anniversary of the passing of American poet, cartoonist, and children’s story writer, Shel Silverstein. I would guess that the majority of us have read at least one of Silverstein’s poems. Remember A Light in the Attic? What about Where the Sidewalk Ends? How many of you were touched by the words in his famous poem, The Giving Tree? In remembrance of Silverstein, one of my student’s wrote a poem of his own about the famous poet, modeled after The Giving Tree. Fitting.

Once there was a poet…

And he loved the little children.

And everyday the children would come,

And the children would listen

And laugh at his silly stories

And make stories of their own.

They would climb up on the tree stump,

And they would sit next to him,

And they gazed up with sparkling eyes.

He would tell them poems,

And they loved the poet.

And the poet was happy.

But time went by.

And the children grew older.

And the poet often sat alone.

Then one day, the children came back.

They listen to his poems,

And they were bored,

And they knew where the sidewalk ended,

And they knew the answers to the whatif’s,

And they knew they didn’t fear the dark.

‘We are too big for poems’ they said,

‘We just wanted to say hello.’

And the poet was happy

… But not really

And after a long time

one of the children came back again

And the old poet said

‘I have nothing left to give you.

I am sorry’

But the man just sat down

And listened.

And the poet read a poem.

And the poet was happy.

In loving memory Of Shel Silverstein