Here's a teaching-inspired poem from my untidy stack of writings. I hope you find it encouraging.
The View from the Front
I took the classroom clock down last week,
because the students and I could no longer
handle its incessant ticking.
Its thin second hand had become a brick,
repeatedly flinging itself at
our thick pane of silence.
But now, as the students focus
back on their books,
I peer over mine
to see what has caused such a stillness –
to find out what can possibly have happened
to bring twenty four teenagers to tranquility.
The flutter of a page, then another,
a clearing of the throat, a sniffle –
not much is happening here, or so it would seem.
But behind the spines clasped tightly
in the students’ hands,
a world is being rolled out
like a new carpet, cut perfectly to fit
into a bedroom full of light.
These kids may not often leave their bedrooms,
their home state, or their profile pages.
Their eyes now, though, have opened wide
to Alaska’s white wilderness,
and their bodies have felt the power
of the Ganges against them.
Each opening of a cover
shoves them forward into a village,
or a living room,
or a club car on a train railing toward Italy,
and they keep turning,
trailing behind the words on the page
that are beginning to look
like a line of ants hiking across a sidewalk
and on through a field,
then into a cavern where a low flame
throws a glow against the dusty walls.
