Richard Lewis<\/a>, 88, teacher and poet, has stayed young by traveling far into the places where children go with their imagination and where he meets them with his. This long journey is the extension of his early poetry, which often dealt with childhood and the beginnings of things.<\/p>\n \u201cAll education is put on hold,\u201d Lewis writes in his book, Taking Flight Standing Still, <\/em><\/a>\u201cwhen a child looks up, trying to read the words the sky is saying.\u201d<\/p>\n His own method, before getting children to write poetry, is to take the sky, for example, as a subject, and have them rub some of its blueness, some of its vastness, onto themselves, into their hands, onto their feet.<\/p>\n He emphasizes in his writing, and in conversation, that the pressure put on children in schools to \u201cfactualize the world\u201d staunches \u201ca poetic way of perceiving experience.\u201d A child\u2019s natural way of perceiving experience.<\/p>\n I first met Lewis in 2019 at his old office in Astoria, Queens, in a building that housed three funeral parlors and a museum, as well as his Touchstone Center for Children, now 54 years old and still connecting with children, via poetry and life dialogues in New York City schools, parks, and playgrounds.<\/p>\n I was struck by the immediate stirring of almost childlike energy whenever he spoke of children. His eyes would shine and his hands move as if to a piece of music both irresistible and inescapable. Four years later, visiting him at his upper East Side Manhattan apartment, I found him pretty much as I recalled him. Short and solid, with a faintly Asian cast to his face. The energy was a bit less, perhaps, but the music, once begun, still animated his life.<\/p>\n As a young poet, Lewis traipsed around the world to compile Miracles<\/em> (Simon & Schuster)<\/a>,<\/em> his classic anthology of children\u2019s poetry. <\/em>He remembers the mud floor of a Calcutta school and the children spread across it, desperately poor, totally attentive.<\/p>\n \u201cI opened my mouth, and they all leaned forward. Something was about to happen\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n What Lewis calls in Taking Flight, <\/em>\u201cThe cell-life of enchantment.\u201d<\/p>\n In the poetry he writes, the native New Yorker\u2019s voice echoes the Chinese masters:<\/p>\n This too<\/em><\/p>\n is a story,<\/em><\/p>\n how a boat<\/em><\/p>\n crossed the<\/em><\/p>\n sky<\/em><\/p>\n and in its<\/em><\/p>\n wake<\/em><\/p>\n a slow<\/em><\/p>\n unending<\/em><\/p>\n trickle<\/em><\/p>\n of<\/em><\/p>\n leaves<\/em><\/p>\n flowed<\/em><\/p>\n out,<\/em><\/p>\n covering<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em>the<\/em><\/p>\n dying<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em>salamander<\/em><\/p>\n Lewis is not unlike that boat, built with a firm sense of purpose, whose oars point interchangeably to sea, sky, heart, and the silence that binds one to the other. A man made boat, the manufacture of cosmic inspiration.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em>I asked him what he had to learn to work effectively with children.<\/p>\n \u201cI had to learn to listen. That was the key. That stayed with me since the beginning.\u201d The beginning was an antique shop in Englewood, New Jersey. He found himself facing a handful of kids, ages 8-11. He began by reciting poetry and saw their eyes glaze over, as if they were back in school again. Suddenly, he changed course, insightfully asking them, \u201cHow did you get here today?\u201d<\/p>\n That brought the students to life. The teacher wanted to hear what they had to say. They had a lot to say.<\/p>\n \u201cI began to realize then that I wanted to engage in a conversation with children.\u201d<\/p>\n I never had such a teacher. My own school career was a mix of tedium and shame. Report cards with lots of red circles like Christmas decorations. No teacher to ask me anything of meaning to rouse me from my funk.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em>I ask Lewis about the effects of the pandemic on children. There is a sigh, a downward look, sadness. A man trying to make sense of a catastrophic storm.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s definitely made children more frightened, frightened of the very circumstances of life itself.\u00a0 For the first time in their lives, its aliveness was taken from them. They couldn\u2019t go out and play. They couldn\u2019t talk to one another. They had to Zoom with teachers sometimes hundreds of miles away. It was very isolating. They had to deal with restrictions that made them fearful of their own childhood.\u201d<\/p>\n How to offset that?<\/p>\n Lewis took a rubber band from the table and began stretching it.<\/p>\n \u201cThe rubber band is the sky. Let\u2019s stretch the sky as far as we can stretch it.\u201d<\/p>\n Or, put another way, let\u2019s rebuild what is limitless\u2014let\u2019s rebuild our imagination.<\/p>\n During COVID, like everyone else, he found himself trying to outstep \u201cthe enigmatic bacteria that was pursuing us.\u201d It caught up with him after the long season of dying was ending. \u201cI had mild COVID.\u201d<\/p>\n In the midst of New York\u2019s lockdown, he\u2019d go for long walks in nearby Central Park.<\/p>\n \u201cThe park was still the same park. It brought me, like always, deep into the process of nature\u2019s unfolding. Biologically, our aliveness depends on everything around us. We are very fragile.\u201d<\/p>\n We come inevitably to the subject of his mortality, which brings up, as he puts it, \u201ccomplicated feelings.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe realization of how quickly this life goes by. It\u2019s a little scary. But at the same time, it evokes the wonder of still having time, being able to gather insights. Contemplating death, I don\u2019t feel fear. Sadness perhaps. A sadness at what we leave behind: books, poems, loved ones. I do sense one moves into another nature of being, or being of nature.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat does that mean?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know what it means.\u201d He laughs. \u201cLet it be a surprise.\u201d<\/p>\n With his life tied to those at the beginning of theirs, his basic equanimity is fed by proximity.<\/p>\n \u201cThe wonderfulness of being with children is that their newness is organic.\u201d<\/p>\n And his work mysterious. Lewis realizes how far back it goes, teaching children, and being taught by them. So many lives coming together and separating, listening and being listened to, vanishing and resurfacing down through the ages.<\/p>\n \u201cThe oldness of what is still beginning!\u201d<\/p>\n Robert Hirschfield<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0is a New York-based writer and poet. He has spent much of the last five years writing and assembling poems about his mother\u2019s Alzheimer\u2019s. In 2019, Presa Press published a volume of his poems titled,<\/em>\u00a0The Road to Canaan. His work has appeared in<\/em>\u00a0Parabola, Tricycle, Spirituality & Health, Sojourners, The Moth\u00a0(Ireland),<\/em>\u00a0Tears in The Fence\u00a0(UK) and other publications.<\/em><\/p>\n Being Part of The Afterlife of Bill Kenney<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\nMore on poets and poetry by Robert Hirschfield:<\/strong><\/h2>\n