For a moment I didn't see her, then I felt a tug on my sleeve. I looked down, and there stood a child five or six years of age. With an appealing shyness she spoke. "Thank you for inviting me to the writing contest."

In her arms, clutched tightly, was her poetry award. Her mother, holding another, still younger child, looked on in proud silence. I bent down, and, looking into her tiny face, smiled and thought "I mustn't cry!" In that moment I knew that the door to poetry is first opened by a child. It must be opened by a child before it can be entered by an adult.

The scene described occurred at the end of an awards ceremony for our writing organization's annual writing contest. As the president of our group, it was a new experience for me to welcome our guests. Somehow, I managed to overcome the butterflies in the pit of my stomach and speak into the microphone.

As the winners each came forward to receive their awards and read their winning entries, my heart raced with a joy I did not fully understand until later. Then I wondered who would teach them to fly on the wings of words while they are young, courageous, and filled with the wonder of all things new? We must show them by our example our own joy in the use of words to paint new pictures of life.

Who will guide the hands and the minds that will one day move the earth's soul with their words? Who will teach, guide and encourage them? Who can show them, if we do not, the magic of new creations of thought captured within words?

"Feel the dignity of a child. Do not feel superior to him, for you are not." I now recall those words found many years ago. I clipped them out and saved them because I felt the truth they whispered to me then, and they continue to whisper to me today.

I remember the first time I tasted Brussels sprouts, heard the Moonlight Sonata, read Moby Dick, and watched a ballet. I didn't like them! It has been said that one must acquire a taste for new things. Poetry may be one of them. The guarantee comes surely with repeated experience. After trying poetry a few times, one may acquire a taste for it, or even an addiction.

Poetry provides an incomparable emotional outlet for the creative personality. We mustn't imagine that creative personalities only develop once we are mature. If we are destined to express ourselves by the written word, this lies within us at birth.

The crime would be in failing to realize this and failing to take the time to encourage a child to explore his or her creative gifts. There is no reward greater for a writer than to behold the wonder on the face of a child who has just discovered the beauty of words. Found in the exploration of sounds, sights, rhythms, and emotions, translated into word pictures to share with others is the experience of the soul's adventures.

We are not all alike. That doesn't matter; we are not supposed to be. What matters a great deal is that we not to try to make one form fit all. At an early age we provide our children with roller skates, baseballs or footballs, readily assuming that all children like these things.

Do we provide our children with books of poetry and teach them early the beautiful rhythms, sights, sounds and images created by words? Do we read poetry to our children as readily as we watch "Sesame Street" with them? Do we invite our children to read poetry to us?

In the small, rural community where I grew up, one had to be a closet poet. The same was true for art or music. While this may not be the case in every rural community, in those communities where it is true, a tragic myth is being perpetuated. The myth has to do with how popularity is defined and measured in society.

Who determines the values by which our children are made to choose courses in their lives?

The same mob-mentality that hung people from trees in the old West and burned witches in Salem!

There is a certain hysteria in how society plots its behavioral course and chooses values, but when this is also practiced in our schools (and why wouldn't it be?) it wastes what we cannot afford to lose!

It is not popular to be bookish, or, Heaven forbid, poetic! Until this way of thinking is changed, no wonder more youngsters choose sports instead of art, music, or poetry. The last thing youngsters really want is to be thought different than those whom they regard as being the most popular kids in school.

Why are we letting such false values set the course for the way our children value poetry? We must take a different course to teach our children to make choices that honestly reflect what their talents are, choices that will offer them opportunities to explore and develop these talents.

In that moment when I felt myself drowning in the innocent, trusting eyes of a creative child, the full weight of the writer's responsibility fell on my shoulders. It will remain there for as long as I live. Although heavy, it is a precious and sweet burden to bear!

      Lou Harper started writing in 1996. Since that time, she has been published five times in Capper's Magazine, and has won or placed in state-wide contests for both poetry and prose, including a recent first and second in poetry for a Maine society annual event.
      Mrs. Harper currently serves as third-term president of the Southern Oklahoma Writer's Guild and as the first-term poetry editor for this magazine. Please visit her website and leave a message in her guest book. She likes that! You can also tell her that you enjoyed her essay on Kudzu Monthly by leaving a nice comment below.
       You can find Lou Harper's short fiction and and poetry, including her recent books "Poetry Collection" and "Oklahoma Poetry," at her website,  luharper.homestead.com