Poem in Your Pocket

Do you know about "Poem in your Pocket" day? I love this idea for everyday, but how fun for coaches, teachers, parents, and students to try this out together with national support. Here is some information about it from the Poets.org site:

Celebrate the second national Poem In Your Pocket Day on Thursday, April 30, 2009!

The idea is simple: select a poem you love during National Poetry Month then carry it with you to share with co-workers, family, and friends on April 30, 2009.

Poems from pockets will be unfolded throughout the day with events in parks, libraries, schools, workplaces, and bookstores.

In this age of mechanical and digital reproduction, it's easy to carry a poem, share a poem, or start your own PIYP day event. Here are some ideas of how you might get involved:

Start a "poems for pockets" give-a-way in your school or workplace Urge local businesses to offer discounts for those carrying poems Post pocket-sized verses in public places Start a street team to pass out poems in your community Distribute bookmarks with your favorite immortal lines Add a poem to your email footer Post a poem on your blog or social networking page Project a poem on a wall, inside or out Text a poem to friends

What ideas and plans do you have for Poetry in Your Pocket day?
Or, what are the ways that you carry poetry with you in your life?

I write or paste poems in my writer's notebooks. (Really more of a life notebook than just a writer's notebook, to be truthful.) Part of my process for beginning a new notebook is to include a poem that holds relevance for me on one of the first pages. I just started a new notebook a few weeks ago, always a very difficult transition for me. I get so attached to the fullness and comfort of the present notebook, and though I may have filled its pages, I don't want to give up the relationship with that notebook to begin a new one. Beginnings are just hard to..... begin. Anyway, here is the poem I chose for the beginning of my new notebook.

Patient Trust In Ourselves & The Slow Work Of God

By Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are all, quite naturally,
impatient in everything to reach the end
without delay.
We should like to skip
the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being
on the way to something unknown,
something new,
and yet it is the law of all progress
that is made by passing through
some stages of instability-
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually –
let them grow,
let them shape themselves,
without undue haste.
Don't try to force them on,
as though you could be today
what time (that is to say, grace and
circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you
and accept the anxiety of
feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.