2/6/19
After:
Wake with the knowledge of sleeping too late
Of falling into the snooze
Of curling up with the dog.
Do not beat yourself up for there is only now
This moment to consider what brings joy
This moment to consider life, to consider
The buds of what you have planted
To consider the holes that you have dug
The phone calls that you have received
Asking for a lemon tree, and you try to decide
What will be easy, what will you be able to give
Maybe some bush beans or cowpeas to feed the lemon
Maybe some black locust seeds that will need to be cut
Maybe some cassia pendula, and this weekend
When the people come, you will need to take cuttings
To find rooting hormone, to consider the neighbors
To put like with like, and this beginning will dress
The fences, will consider the mirlitons lost
With Katrina, many of the old ways went, many
Of the Tabasco peppers gone to the waters
And there is still Mr. Lee, well over eighty
And when asked what you can do for him:
He wants a pepper plant; the one you gave him died
The bay leaf tree still thrives
In front of his house, on the block where
Human beings scatter when the cops pass, on the
Block where a police light, red and blue
Bounces on the pavement, spinning atop a pole
And you know that all that comes before you is a gift
You know that there is no scarcity, that there is
Enough for everybody no matter what has begun
No matter what thoughts you wake with
For they are only thoughts and the whole reason
For meditation is to get beneath all of these thoughts
To be the witness, to see what your stage characters are:
Teacher, Sponsor, Grower, Writer, Boyfriend, Weirdo, Seeker,
Cool guy, Speaker, and some others more subtle, some others
Missing. Like son and brother, and each day you do not connect
Each day that becomes further away from the next
Further away from birth and closer to death
As Banjo curls up beside you, each morning you know
The day is coming, you sometimes feel your hands
Rolled up into fists before you rise from the bed.
Unfurl them, wiggle your fingers, ask to see the joy
In everything, ask to find the characters in the stories
To engage the students sitting before you, to ask them
To think, to consider, to guess what they might do
Were they one of the characters. This is becoming invested
This is the crossroads at which you find yourself:
A school divided, but not in the way it might seem
A school where there is change that is needed
And a school where you fit in despite feeling different
A school where there is not integration
Despite the steps of Ruby Bridges long ago
A school where you are a white man, a symbol
Of what has been oppression since the founding of this country
And in the mornings you greet the students
You welcome them with a smile and encouraging words
Some have shifted the way they feel, from hate to love
From judgement to acceptance, even the handshake with D
The way she would miss your hand on purpose, say psych
The way that you let this happen, knowing this would happen
Every day, the way this went from her one upping you
From her tricking you, from her demeaning you in a sense
To becoming what connected the two of you, what became
A known joke between both, what became like the remote con
Handshake of Korea, where people shook from across the room
Where what was once anger and tension, tension you can feel
Touching the shoulders of some students, you feel the rage boiling
The nervousness boiling, the anxiety inside, the shaking of a leg
The constant need to move, to be up and down
And you realize that a way needs to be found, a way to get students
Involved, a way to interest them. Take what they want to know, let them
Make reading and writing their own, and guide them along the way
Ask the questions that you would ask while reading on your own.
Maybe take Maurice Ruffins book and make copies and begin this.
Address race, work with the Harlem Renaissance, work with Black Lives Matter
Learn as much as you can and listen, for in this is the desire
To find the creative and the love inside every child, and
Remember that they are children, eighth grade is not yet adult
Remember the way that you felt at that age, the confusion
On the bus listening to AC DC, the way you liked Andrea Phillips
But the way that you asked her to go with you
And how she said yes, and then how
You had to be dared to kiss her.
Go back to all of this confusion
To what you were doing, the memories that you cannot grasp
That first summer where you took a drink.
