Borrowed Lines

Today I brought in a list of lines from other poems. After reading them aloud and discussing unfamiliar words, each child picked a favorite to serve as a title or first line. I've tried this lesson before, and I love to see how different groups respond in totally different ways. My students at Lawrence Barnes were more drawn to wild, surreal images, and this class preferred simple, down-to-earth ones. Though each poet chose a different line, every single one wrote about night in one way or another:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.
When I was born I forgot
where I was from. Did I come
from Mars or Jupiter? Was I
a donkey being a slave?
A cat scratching people?
When I was born there
was a war, guns shooting,
but I can't remember.
-Safia

Do not go gentle into that good night.
It is dark and the moon
and stars are shining. I hear
frogs and crickets
in the night and I
hear owls.
-Saruro

I stop to smell
the night and
it smells
fresh. If you
close your
eyes it feels
like you
fly.
-Dahiro

those of you in the night sky above the moon:
moon the moon is light, it will always be light.
stars stars always move, anywhere they like.
cloud cloud makes person's face, and it moves anywhere.
-Asho

When I look at the moon I see beautiful stars, they look pretty as flowers. When I look in the moon I see my family, and I always like to look in the moon. When I look in the moon I see my friends having fun with me. Looking in the moon is fun.
-Adout