National Poem-in-your-Pocket Day -- April 30, 2020

     The following stanza by  award-winning children's author,  Beatrice Schenk de Regniers, (1914-2000), has led to an annual celebration in US schools of "Poem-in-your-Pocket" Day:

          Keep a poem in your pocket 
          and a picture in your head     
          and you'll never feel lonely
          at night when you're in bed.  

This year's Poem-in-your-Pocket Day will be celebrated on Thursday, April 30.  Here is a link to  "Counting and Math Rhymes" -- a website that offers a variety of choices for young people's pockets.  My own pocket -- and my mind, during these days of pandemic confusion -- will be holding lines from Carl Sandburg's "Arithmetic":

from Arithmetic     by Carl Sandburg (1878-`1967)

Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons 
          in and out of your head.

Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice 
          and you can look out of the window and see the blue sky -- 
          or the answer is wrong and you have to start all over 
          and try again and see how it comes out this time.

Here is a link to a math-poetry booklet with Sandburg's complete poem.  This link leads to previous blog-postings of mathy poems by Carl Sandburg.  And, if you want more "Poem in your Pocket" postings, go here.