Visions of a hope through the hearts and minds of our youth

Last spring, Buddha Smile School received an invitation for their students to participate in an international poetry exchange called Poems for Peace. With great enthusiasm, eleven-year-old Daisy Saini embraced the idea and inspired 14 students from grades 5 and 6 to ponder the meaning of peace and express their thoughts in pictures and poems. Daisy also wrote a peace poem and her enthusiasm was contagious–many of the adults at BSS contributed their musings too.

Poems for Peace is a cross-cultural poetry exchange that aims to strengthen understanding between youth worldwide, enabling curiosity and knowledge to replace prejudice, apathy and fear. Students are asked to consider the meaning of peace, where it abides, how it is created, how it is destroyed and how, as peacemakers, they can contribute to world peace. All poems are posted on the Poems for Peace website, www.poemsforpeace.org.

Poems for Peace loosely describes a poem as any written expression that conveys a heart-felt message, an inner truth. It may appear as a letter, prayer, story, traditional poem or a picture. It’s through these expressions of the heart that one can see beyond the constructs of the mind and appreciate the common thread that unites us all.

So far, Poems for Peace has received poems from India, Nepal, Tibet Autonomous Region of China, Israel, Jamaica, Tanzania and The United States. For more information about Poems for Peace or to contribute a poem, please visit www.poemsforpeace.org.

Three poems:

Listen to our Prayers

God, please listen to our words of prayer:
By reading and writing, we become more skillful.
Always do the right things.
Let us make peace shine all over the world.
By Dharam Chand Kumar, 5th Grade, Age 12

My Heart Fills with Peace

When stars and moon get up at night
My heart fills with peace
When butterflies sit upon the flowers
To collect nectar and pollen
When rivers and seas dance
Then my heart fills up with peace.
By Mamta Kumar, 5th grade, age 10

Gandhi’s Teaching

Never see or speak wrong or cause harm to others.
Never pay attention to the negative things in the world.
This is the teaching of Mahatma Gandhi.
Everyone try to practice this valuable lesson,
Which will help everyone to attain peace,
A state of mind with no wars,
Only silence.
By Shiv Kumar Patel, 6th grade, age 11