What We Carry: Poetry Month at Acera

by Dr. Heather J. Pinedo-Burns, Head of School

I believe deeply in the importance of cherishing favorite things—and sharing them. Your favorite candies from the corner confectionery. A beloved swimming hole on a hot summer day. Books, worn and well-loved, passed from hand to hand. Traditions that are honored, year after year, because they hold meaning.

One of the joys I had coming to Acera was discovering that celebrating April as Poetry Month was already woven into the fabric of the school. The Poetry Assembly, the sharing of words, the collective pause to listen and reflect—it felt both joyful and essential.

Last year, and again this year, I shared one of my favorite Poetry Month traditions: Poem in Your Pocket, which we celebrated today here at Acera.

There is something simple and powerful about the idea. A poem you can carry with you—literally in your pocket. And also, metaphorically, the lines that stay with you, that speak to your soul, that you return to again and again.

For many years, I have kept a book of poetry near or on my desk. It began as a small ritual while I was writing my dissertation. In the midst of long stretches of focused work, I would open to a page and read just a few lines. It offered a pause, a breath, a moment of inspiration. That practice has stayed with me.

The poems I shared today on Poem in Your Pocket Day span a wide range of voices and styles—from Nikki Giovanni to William Carlos Williams, Langston Hughes to Joy Harjo, Maya Angelou, Stanley Kunitz, Amanda Gorman, and Shel Silverstein—to name just a few. Some are humorous, some a bit snarky (including a favorite about stolen breakfast food), and others reflect on home, books and libraries, nature, and fireflies. Each offers something a little different—another way of seeing, feeling, or understanding.

As we begin Poetry Month, we are also looking ahead to how we close this month-long celebration of poetry together as a community. Inlate April we hold our annual Poetry Month Assembly. This informal gathering is a celebration of voice and expression. Students and staff share poems—original works and beloved favorites, both new and old. And nearly every year, in a tradition we treasure, a student takes the stage to recite an Acera favorite poem, Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll, upholding our tradition as a community.

And so as we turn our calendar pages to April and now are beginning to see the signs of springtime I’ll leave you with the words of former U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón, whose poem Instructions on Not Giving Up reminds us of the quiet persistence of renewal with springtime green:

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

And yes—I’ll take all the hope, the springtime green, and all the poetry. I’ll take it all, and may you gather it too as well.