by Jacqueline Brown
A comb has teeth but can't bite,
A shoe has a tongue but can't talk,
Rulers have feet and tables have legs
Yet neither of them can walk.
A chair has an arm but no elbow,
A clock has two hands but can't hold,
Hills have brows, and corn has ears
Though they never turn blue in the cold.
Needles and spuds have eyes
But not one of them can see,
And though a jug has a lip, and a tunnel a mouth,
They can't drink coffee or tea.
Rocks and clocks have faces,
Books have backs and a spine,
A well's got a bottom, a sausage as skin;
There's a neck on a bottle of wine.
Roads have hard shoulders but can't shrug,
A car has a body plus parts,
Tools have chests and chimneys have breasts.
But only people - and lettuce - have hearts!
"There are many who hold, as I do, that the most important part of life is not the age of university studies, but the first one, the period from birth to the age of six. For that is the time when a man's intelligence itself, his greatest implement, is being formed. But not only his intelligence; the full totality of his psychic powers." (Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind)