This article describes the use of poetry as a pedagogical tool intended to intensify the reflective process of a service-learning project. In addition to keeping electronic journal entries, and summarizing and reflecting on service activities, preservice teachers wrote (or selected) poems to reconstruct their experiences and recreate some of the feelings experienced while working with the poor. The purpose was to help deepen students' levels of understanding of children and families who live in poverty through continuously processing, revisiting and reflecting on the complexity of issues faced by the poor. A Poetry-Read-Aloud served as a culmination to the semester-long project. (Contains 3 figures.)