Poem in a hurricane: The teachers

Perhaps it was the hurricane, school being closed, the articles I read this morning, and the full moon. I was inspired to write this poem.

The Teachers

We’re in this together.

We don’t raise bars. We raise children.

 

Bars are metalic and mark rigid end points;

Here is where I stopped learning about multiplication.

Here is where I mastered “response to literature” and ceased reading.

 

We’re in this together.

We don’t raise bars. We raise children.

 

Our value can be measured years later in every love affair started over a good book,

every conversation about why the coffee spoon bends

or what the rocks have seen in their time on Earth.

 

Try to fill your pail with us—

and see us jump overboard in multitudes;

some with splashes, some

evaporating silently,

finding new harbors, and the light of new fires.

 

We are the teachers.

We’ve always known more of you

than you’ve known of us.

 

We can always do better. In this world

Or the next.

 

~Ariel Sacks