Friends, my novel Telephone of the Tree has received three starred reviews so far and is an Amazon Best Book of the Year. If you know a young or not-so-young person who might be comforted by it, please respond and let me know why and I’ll enter their name in a drawing for a signed copy. 

In summer I plant cherry tomatoes on either side of my poetry hut in the flower garden next to the sidewalk in front of my house. A sign in the hut says “Help yourself to a poem and a tomato!” I scroll up poems at night, and during the day, as I write books on my porch, I watch passersby help themselves to poems and tomatoes. Some of the poems in the poetry hut were written especially for children, so I write “For kids!” on them in black Sharpie.

But guess what? I’m a grownup and I know that grownups love kid poems too. Today’s poem is for all you grownups out there.

About the Teeth of Sharks​, by John Ciardi

The thing about a shark is—teeth,
One row above, one row beneath.

Now take a close look. Do you find
It has another row behind?

Still closer—here, I’ll hold your hat:
Has it a third row behind that?

Now look in and…Look out! Oh my,
I’ll never know now! Well, goodbye.

​Click here for more information about poet John Ciardi. Today’s poem is from his book You Read to Me, I’ll Read to You, published in 1962 by Lippincott Press. 

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