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Wednesday, June 25, 2014

EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

It is 1961. In the class sit (approximately)
40 students. 39 are white.
All of them have matriculated
(a word they recently learned)
at Millersville State Teachers College.
The name of the course is
Educational Psychology.

The professor has just been
asked a question that has
caused him anxiety because,
as is apparent to everyone,
he does not know the answer.
He is becoming increasingly agitated.
He is fully aware that the students
are enjoying his agitation
because they do not like him.
He is not a likable person.

He makes a desperate and phony
attempt at self-deprecating humor:
"Look at me. This question has
got me sweating like a nigg..."
He catches himself before pronouncing
the final syllable. Without looking
at the student, the professor says only
two words -- the name of the student
and "sorry." There is a long and
palpitating silence.

            Fifty years later
it is all that anyone in the room
will remember about the professor
and Educational Psychology.

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

LEAVING THE GARDEN

And over here at the back
of the house is the little woods
I told you about. Started small,
some ferns and hostas, then got
into the native plant thing:
Virginia bluebells, trillium,
cohosh (blue and black),
even stuck in a service tree,
a spice bush, then discovered
some that were here already:
toadshade, spring beauties, bloodroot.

Now that we're going to move,
I guess I feel a little bit like Adam.
‘Course the Good Book says
he sinned, got kicked out for it.
Still, it musta' hurt.
He'd been put in charge, worked
hard to keep things right, loved
when April came and everything
sprang back to life, greened the brown
ground like that sweet woodruff
over there beneath the oak. Oh well,
he must have thought, while it lasted
it was good. But I wonder if he wondered
about whoever came after . . . would
they care for it, would they love it
half as much as he had?
   

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

BENIGN DECEIVER

Billy Collins is my inspiration.
He makes it seem so simple:
put this word after that word
which will lead logically
and irrevocably to the next.

The result will be
poetic felicity.

Or in my case,
maybe not.

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

LIBERTY AND JUSTICE

He - high school senior
I - part-time substitute teacher, seminary student
The time - 1969
The situation - open class discussion: "After Graduation, What Then?"

I'd learned by now they preferred,
insisted upon, "black," not "Negro," not "colored."
When he stood up at the back,
everyone, even the girls in the front row,
stopped talking.

    Here's what. I graduate.
    My number comes up.
    They ship my ass over there,
    gimme a gun so I can kill people
    who never done nuthin' to me.
    They be tryin' to kill me too.
    Ain't right. Ain't right. And not
    a damn thing I can do about it.


He -     high school senior in Chicago
I -     Native of Lancaster County,
    home to Mennonites, Amish, Brethren, Quakers
    who believe and teach their children
    not to take up arms,
    to turn the other cheek,
    whose draft board will readily
    grant them 1-O status,
    "conscientious objector."

He -    has no such option
I -    have, have taken it, and ask:
    so tell me again -- exactly how is this
    liberty and justice for all?