Most kids have had a teddy bear or other stuffed toy that they loved. Try writing a poem about one of your favorite toys, stuffed or otherwise. Make a list of everything you can remember about that toy and then start exaggerating. That’s what I did in my own teddy bear poem. If you can’t remember enough about it, ask your friends about their stuffed toys. Maybe you’ll hear something so wonderful that you simply have to put it in a poem. There’s no law that says you can’t combine something that you did with something someone else did. I do it all the time.
Another thing is to be aware of what’s going on around you. If I hadn’t paid attention to that little boy in the restaurant in Texas, I never would have written the poem. And remember, as soon as you notice something special or as soon as you get an idea, write it down. I’m never without a notebook, and I make notes in it almost every day. I’ve been filling notebooks with ideas for more than forty years, and I have so many that if I stacked them up, they’d be at least twice as tall as I am. I still haven’t used all the ideas in those notebooks.
By the way, I wrote another teddy bear poem based on that little boy who told me that he gave his teddy bear a haircut, thinking that it would grow back. Here it is: