Teacher Stories

I just got home from a meeting, and during the course of the evening, many tales of past teachers were exchanged. These were told with great zest and detail. Impersonations were witty and well-done. And, without exception, the stories were farcical, pitiful, or horrifying.

Great God in heaven, if nothing else is ever granted to me, please don't let me wind up as one of these stories.

I mean, sure, not every student is going to like me. I know for a fact that stories about me exist. I have too many mannerisms (the flying hands I can't talk without, the large vocabulary I fling about, the pauses when I speak caused by my migraine meds, etc.) not to be copied facetiously. This in and of itself is just a part of teaching high school and not something I worry about, actually.

What I don't want to become perceived as is what I heard going around the table tonight. I heard tales of teachers who belittle, teachers who criticize, teachers who tear down and destroy. I heard tales of teachers who hit, teachers who insulted, and teachers struck at the very inner heart of their students. I kept thinking, "Oh please don't let there be a student somewhere telling something like this about me..."

I wonder if the teachers who starred in those tales knew they were like that. Did they know that they were being callous, cruel, and damaging? Would they care?

I hope that if I'm this way somebody will tell me. Otherwise, I guess I'll just hope the stories are fond ones.

Refuge

I want to take a day off and just drive. I don't know to where. Just get in the car one morning with a full tank of gas and point it in a direction and be surprised when it stops by what surrounds me. The idea of that kind of discovery is incredibly appealing right now. I'm tired. Everything that surrounds me feels like it is a battle, a struggle, a cruelty, or a lost cause, and my shining armor is getting more than a little dented and my sword is dull. I need a place of refuge in which to hide for just a little while to pick myself up again.

Tonight, I chose "It Is Well With My Soul" for my offertory just for the pleasure of feeling those chords sing up through the organ and through my tendons and marrow. I had all the stops set on the organ, and it was as majestic as our organ can get. I don't know if anyone else in the church was moved, but it was a soul-deep prayer from me, and a petition. Right now, there is a whole lot that is not "well with my soul," but with that song, I pray that it can be, that I can learn for it to be again.

As with any time I play that song, my mind went back to my beautiful friend P. who plays the piano with such amazing passion and skill. I thought of his arrangement of the hymn, and for a moment, I wished I could just curl up under his piano for awhile, catlike, and hide there, become somehow detached from everything except the music for just a little while until things felt like they were less insane or ridiculous. Maybe then my head wouldn't hurt so much....

I guess nobody really gets to run away, though, in the real world. The ties that hold us bind us stronger than steel cables, more surely than straitjackets. There's really nothing to do for it but take another Maxalt and get some sleep.

Dancing in the Dark

We've been having major electrical issues at school the past three days, and we've been without electricity for the better part of those days while the students were there. It's been odd. The whole campus hasn't been dark; two of the three main buildings that comprise our campus have been fine. The biggest and oldest section has been the one that hasn't had any power because one of the main breakers has gone bad suddenly. It went bad Wednesday about 3rd period, and we've been dealing with on-again, off-again outages since then.

At first, it was frustrating because of the shifting of lesson plans, but by the beginning of the second day, it was just amusing. There was no point in getting upset. After all, it wasn't something that was happening on purpose. They had crews down there trying to fix it pretty much constantly for the past three days, and somebody said they even flew some guru in from the coast. (I don't even want to think about what that means is actually wrong with the electrical in our beloved old building...)

The kids were all good, at least in my class, anyway. I don't know about elsewhere. For what I teach, electricity is really sort of optional. It's nice, but hey, as long as we can see, we're good. We raged on. I know some of the other classes, particularly our computer classes, didn't have that option, though, so I hope everything will get patched up this weekend.

This week was a challenging one, and one that really stretched everybody's flexibility to the maximum. Maybe this means we're due for something really nice as a surprise soon. This is what I keep telling myself, anyway...

The Prisoner

For my payday splurge this month, I bought the box set of the original series The Prisoner. I'm going to dole them out bit by bit until I the new AMC series premieres. Along with Dr. Who, The Prisoner, is one of the series that I remember from my childhood. I don't think I ever saw all the episodes, and I know I didn't see them in order. I remember being perpetually confused by it, but I think that is one of the hallmarks of the show, actually.

I watched the first one, "Arrival," tonight, and it is strange and wonderful. I had forgotten just how weird a place The Village really was, how much sinister stuff was hidden under than bright candy shell. It's a perfect example of a dystopia, really, and I might use it this year when I teach my dystopian novels.

I'm looking forward to seeing all of these originals and then seeing what AMC can do with their remake of the series. It's always risky when something old and beloved is redone, but I love Ian McKellan, and if anybody can pull of that sort of jovial and threatening demeanor that Number 2 is supposed to have, he's it. We'll have to see if Jim Caviezel can handle the brooding rebellion essential to Number 6. If so, it should be a good show.

Home Early

For about the last week, I've been staying at school late for one thing or another, as late as 7:00 the last few nights. Today, I just decided to pack it in and come home before the sun went down. It was great.

I had to walk out and leave a big pile of stuff in my room that I'll need to catch up on tomorrow at some point, but it was somehow such a relief to lock that door on it and walk away. It was almost like going on vacation, somehow, just the stacking of papers on the desk and getting out before housekeeping turned out the lights on me.

I'll go in a little early tomorrow, stay a little late, but I know I'll be happier and better off for not pushing it unnecessarily this afternoon. There's no need to be chained to that desk every second of my life.

Indecision

I'm writing this through the hazy filter of Maxalt after a sudden migraine, so if it doesn't make sense, that might be part of the cause. I probably can't blame the Maxalt for everything, though...

I'm very tired right now, tired, frustrated, and confused. I'm busy, and as long as I'm working, I'm fairly happy, but that's no great surprise. The students always make me happy. If I look away from them for five minutes, though... Everywhere things are bad, bad and, it seems, tenaciously determined to get worse....

I don't know what I'm going to do. Germany hovers in the back of my mind like something with broad wings looking for a place to land. Is this what is supposed to be next for me? Am I supposed to stay here? Do I just need to take a long vacation and sleep? What is making me feel this constant stress and pressure?

I hate the not-knowing-what-to-do. I could bull-in-the-china-shop this, but that's one shoddy approach to take to one's future, I've always thought. Maybe it just reaches a point where you have to and pray that when all the little pieces of crockery settle, you can live with the pattern they make.

On the other hand, maybe this is an exercise in patience and faith. Maybe I'm going to be shown the way if I keep looking for it. I have been before.

The thing I fear is that I AM being shown the door and that I am not realizing it, that it's going to close and that I'm going to be standing here in a situation where the water is rising all around me and there will be nothing left to do but go under. I fear that I'm really supposed to be somewhere else, and that by staying here, I'm actually doing the wrong thing because this place is home, is comfortable, is known.

I heard a song on the radio the other day from Matthew West called "The Motions" and the lyrics in part read

I don't wanna go through the motions
I don't wanna go one more day
without Your all consuming passion inside of me
I don't wanna spend my whole life asking,
"What if I had given everything,
instead of going through the motions?"

This is almost pure Thoreau, of course, but it's always been a philosophy of mine. I found myself sitting in the car in a parking lot, and I had to ask myself in my current frame of mind how long it's going to be before I might wake up one morning and be just going through the motions. I couldn't bear it. I couldn't live with myself if I did.

So now the question is stay or go. Find a way to refresh this life somehow or move on to another somewhere else. And the agony is that I just can't get any clear sense of what the right thing to do right now is. Maybe that in and of itself is my answer. Maybe if it really were time to spread my wings and fly away, then I would know it with the clearness of a silver bell ringing. I just don't know.

The Zen of Cleaning

My house has been getting steadily worse over the past couple of weeks, floors needing the steam cleaner and the "real" mop instead of the Swiffer, piles of stuff everywhere needing sorting, recycling needing to be taken to what passes for a recycling center around here, books needing to be reshelved where I've pulled them down to read this or that or where I've finished reading them, and of course, the incredible and unending mess caused just by having pets. I've been sick the past couple of days, but today I felt much better, and I decided that today was a good day to clean the house. I threw the rugs in the washing machine, rolled out the heavy-duty vacuum, and got at it.

Just doing the carpeted floors with the heavy-duty vacuum and steam cleaner takes about three hours, but I usually hate to do it. Just getting all the equipment out and assembled is cumbersome. The vacuum is a Rainbow, so it uses water, too, and so just filling the reservoirs, changing the water, cleaning, and so forth gets old fast, but today, I didn't mind. I just wanted the house clean.

There was something meditative, too, about just clearing my mind and moving the machines back and forth across the floor. I wasn't responsible for anyone else's progress. I didn't have to fill out any forms or paperwork on it. I could just track my progress by the wet carpet and the dirty water pouring down the drain.

I still have a lot to do; there are fixtures to scrub and the big mop job still hasn't been done in the kitchens and baths because I ran out of energy. I'll finish it up tomorrow and have the satisfaction of starting the week with a really clean house. Who knows? Maybe this spurt of domesticity will extend so far as to cooking something as well. I don't know...that might be taking things too far....

Alive, If Not Kicking Very High

A short post and then to bed. The crud has got me. I am feeling much better tonight, but yesterday, I slept all day except for brief forays into consciousness to dose myself, drink something, and fall back down again. I dragged myself into town last night to help set up for a service project the organization I sponsor was doing, and I'm glad I did that because it was nice, but I am kaput now.

I went to school today, and since it was Friday, a day of vocabulary quizzes and finishing up the week, I was okay. I hope after a weekend of rest I'll be back at whatever it is that passes for top speed for me. So far, I haven't been to the doctor yet, so I'm happy with that, but I'll have to see if something moves in on me now that the cold is gone. Keep your fingers crossed for me....

And now, to bed. I can hear it calling me softly. The various and assorted animals around are already being bad influences. Roux is snoring on the other couch in that blissfully abandoned way that only pit bulls are capable of. I think I'm going to go see about finding some blissful abandon (although I don't think I snore...how the heck would I know, really, though?) of my own. Tomorrow will be full of cleaning and (sigh) grading.

Putting the Ick in Sick

I feel like I got hit by a truck. Help. I was sniffly yesterday afternoon, and by the time I got up this morning, it had morphed into a full-blown nastiness. By lunch, I was wanting to hole up under my desk and die. Now, I'm ensconced on my couch and drifting, full of Dayquil and misery.

I hate being sick. It just, to use some perfectly blunt language, sucks. This time, though, I decided not to do what I usually would. I decided to go ahead and just arrange for the substitute today before I left school. Normally, I would have waiting until in the morning to make the command decision about the sub, but I feel so crappy today and tomorrow's agenda includes something that does not require my presence in any way, form, or fashion, so I decided to take the day to try to beat this thing down.

I hope a day of sleep will kill it. If not, I'll have to load up and go sit in the clinic until they can shoot me and give me a prescription for some antibiotics. Oh, how I do so hope to avoid it....

Mockingbird

I got an email yesterday asking me to be a part of a panel discussion happening before a performance of a play version of To Kill a Mockingbird at our local performing arts center. I agreed to do it, and much to my surprise, I managed not to make a total fool out of myself.

The play performance was quite good. I wasn't sure what to expect when taking a beloved work of literature and making something for the stage of it. The key scenes were there, and many of the best lines were preserved. It felt like Mockingbird, most importantly, so I think it was a success.

It amazes me how important this book has been to so many people and how many people view it in so many different ways. Just during our panel discussion, I could tell that there were those who viewed it as a religious experience, as an important piece of literature, as something that captures a slice of the change from childhood to adulthood, as something that preaches a doctrine. I, like everybody else, have my own philosophy of what the book is and does, but I'm pretty sure I've talked about it in a previous posting, so I won't go through that again here.

There was one lady who had a signed first edition there tonight. She had come by it through marriage and accident, but still.... It was neat to see Harper Lee's signature on it, especially since she's not doing massive signings anymore. She had a great story, and part of the wonder of the evening was everyone standing around telling Mockingbird stories. This book always pulls everyone together that way.

Johnson's Quote on Learning

"Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it." ~ Samuel Johnson

I wish he weren't right about this. I wish I could Pollyanna up and say, "No! People are constantly looking for knowledge and questing for truth!" However, being a believer in the truth, I can't quite lie to myself about this one that much, can't quite twist it into the positive. Johnson was a curmudgeonly old dog, and much of what he said sets my teeth on edge; I think of him as a "glass decidedly half empty" sort of fellow. Though it breaks my heart, I have to concede this point to him. Most people really don't want to know.

I guess I can understand it somewhat. It's not always comfortable to know something. It causes the world to shift and stretch sometimes when something new is learned. You can't always go back to looking at a person or a place, a group or an event, in the same way. The surface illusion is shattered and all the things that were hidden down in the quiet still depths come roiling up to the top, like a foot stepping in the silt of a clear pool. What richness can come from that, though, once a person gets used to the changes! And not every change has to be a bad one...

I keep thinking about Prometheus bringing that holy fire down from the mountain, the price he paid for it, the sacrifice always associated with knowledge. Today, would mankind even look up at the burning brand, or would they continue to huddle in the darkness and cold when the Titan descended? Worse yet, if he didn't sing and dance for them, amuse and entertain them, would they be the ones to punish him, cast him out?

I keep thinking of how everyone says things were better "in the good old days." I wonder if that was ever true. Clearly, Johnson thought people as a lump whole were fairly uninterested in knowing during his time, and he by frak lived in a period called "the Enlightenment." If he was writing this then, when were these "good old days" in which everyone was studious, everyone interested in learning, in knowing? I suspect they are as much a myth as the Titan who defied Olympus to bring down the gift to man.

I suppose now, as then, those embers of the holy fire have to be tended by the few who see their value, whose eyes are caught, entranced by the flickering light of its jewel-like coals. Those who value learning and knowing are like Prometheus, I guess, willing to brave any punishment to seek it out, to keep it alive, whether it's isolation from the culture as a whole, the inability to keep up with financial obligations, or whatever other eagle waits circling above. It's ironic to me sometimes, ironic and overwhelmingly heartbreaking, that so many are warmed and provided for by the very thing they eschew, that they shut themselves outside its true radiance and allow themselves to be satisfied with only a faint reflection.

Germany

It's been showing up everywhere lately, in a poem I liked, in a book somebody suggested I read, in the play I'm teaching to one class of my students, in the flag hanging randomly off the back of the SUV I passed on the interstate: Germany. Tonight after choir practice, I was talking with someone who recently returned from a year of military service there. She told me about how much she had enjoyed her posting and that they are currently seeking teachers for the school associated with the base she was on. I could make money and teach in a place where there was history surrounding me again, where I could indulge my need for the past along with getting a paycheck that might actually pay all my bills for once. The thought is a little intoxicating.

I think they would want me. I should have the qualifications. I have two degrees that would make me appealing. I have a U.S. teaching license, have taught high school for six years, have been department chair for three, and have taught AP for four (or is it five now? it's all running together on me...), so I think I am probably as desirable candidate as anyone else would be. I'd be at least qualified enough to try it, let's put it that way.

I am in a quandary. I like what I do now, where I am now, and the thought of packing my boxes and closing the door for the last time on that classroom makes me uneasy and sad. However, I know it is possible to stay in a place too long, to cling to something because it is comfortable and known when you should let go of it and leap out into the unknown to see if your wings will hold you. I also know that as recently as last week I was tempted by an ad for a new school opening in Turkey....

I wish I had someone I could really talk to about this, someone who understood and could guide me. I can't think of a single soul, though. Granted, it's not your everyday sort of situation, but still...I wish there were someone. My parents will not want me to go. They never do. Mostly, they see this sort of thing as an insurmountable impossibility even though I've done it before.

I guess I will sit and think now, brood, ruffle my feathers a little, shuffle my feet and the possibilities. I don't know what the outcome will be. I need some time before I decide whether or not it's time for the chapters of my life to change again.

Couch Naps and Other Signs of Being Old

Lately, I have the best of intentions of getting all sorts of things done when I get home in the evenings. There are books to be read, stories to be written, papers to be graded (okay, maybe not...let's get real), housework to be done...the list is virtually endless. However, once I sit down on my couch to eat dinner, suddenly, I am pulled into a vortex of sleep, and the next thing I know, it's 11:30 or so and time to drag myself free and go to bed for real.

I'm getting old. Really, really old. This has to be the reason.

Or maybe it's the frakkin' Topamax. I don't know.

I think it's age. I'm showing other signs, too. Every day when I look in the mirror, added to all my other marks of beauty are an increasing number of streaks of silver. Those amuse the hell out of me. I remember vividly when my mother's hair started to go gray, and how it seemed to freak her out. I am just hoping that if mine does go that it goes like my grandfather's did. He had a gorgeous platinum silver mane. Of course, he started out with jet black hair, so I think we have a bit of a difference in initial material going here.... Regardless, I won't be coloring mine. Maybe people will quit asking me if I'm a student instead of a teacher if I go much grayer.

Well, the couch is about to consume me. I am going to go ahead and migrate to the bed for the night. Sad, this. It's Friday night, and my big plans involve a book translated from another language and a ridiculously early bedtime, and I'm actually sort of excited about it. I think I might need to get a life....

Patterns

Rainy, gloaming Mississippi always triggers something in my memory that feels like Ireland. It makes the raven feathers of my soul ruffle and long for flight. Even now as we slide from summer to autumn, there is still a greenness that lingers, and when the misty rain veils it, it shimmers with the same look I saw when I was overseas. I wonder if this is why so many Irish immigrants wound up in this area, if they saw something of home in these plains and hills, something that satisfied them.

Of course, my friend T. from Japan always laughs and says that all places on the earth feel the same because all places on the earth are on the earth. Their fundamental sameness comes from their linking. We had that conversation bouncing down a beach road in his small SUV when I remarked that that particular corner of Japan looked a lot like a part of Costa Rica I'd been in.

I wonder if places are familiar because they really do share similarities or because we seek the comfort of the known in situations where things are different or strange. I sort of like the idea of the world being cut out of big strips of the same thing sometimes. It's oddly comforting. I also like the idea of traveling to different places and seeing what other cultures did with their version of our environment.

I'll continue to look for the little pools of other places I've been in the places I am now for whatever reason they appear. It's a way to live those trips again if nothing else.

HA!

"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." ~ Bill Watterson

Thinking about the Truth

This is the Noh mask for Raiden or Ikazuchi, the personification of Thunder.


I am not afraid of the pen, or the scaffold, or the sword. I will tell the truth wherever I please. ~ Mother Jones

I was musing in my car as I was driving home today about what would happen if we all simply told each other what we were really thinking most of the time. Would anybody still talk to anybody else? And if we're thinking these things, why aren't we acting on them?

There is a certain type of person who is forever asking me, "What are you thinking?" They then proceed to sit and stare at me like I am some sort of divine guru out of whose mouth jewels of wisdom are about to fall. It's creepy as all get out. I feel like a sideshow performer. It's sort of like, "Hey, give the monkey a banana and see if she'll do another trick." I don't know why these people seem to get such a huge charge out of this, exactly. It seems that I don't quite see things the way everybody else does, maybe, and that's amusing to some. Maybe it's a bit like paying your fifty cents and going inside a funhouse or something. Who really knows?

What I usually do is get sort of flustered, find a way to turn the conversation down a side alley, and do either the verbal version or the physical version of running away. After all, my thoughts are my own very private universe, and it's not really any of their damn business, is it? There are very few people I know well enough to open my truest self up to; most people get the equivalent of a Japanese Noh mask. Is that a dishonesty? It's not "not-me" that they see; it's just perhaps just not the fullest version of me. Everybody is this way, I'm sure... Right?

What I want to do when I'm asked that question lately, though, is smile my most dangerous smile and take off the gloves, the mask, and just answer them. "What are you thinking right now?" Hmm...well, let me just tell you. I'm thinking about how hard it is not to reach up and slap you. I'm thinking about how much I'd like to be at home on my couch reading a good book instead of trapped here in this conversation with you. Conversely, it might be something more pleasant: I'm thinking about what his lips might taste like, feel like pressed to mine during a first kiss or what the view looks like right now from the dancing balcony at Kyomizuydera. It could be really nothing at all, in fact. I'm thinking I have to go to Wal-Mart and get cat food or I'm going to have really angry animals at home tonight. I'm thinking the air has gone out of that stupid back tire again. So rarely is the truth provocative or even mildly interesting....

There are times, though, when telling the truth about what one is thinking is critical. I spent too many years holding back my true feelings about things, thinking for some reason that I was not entitled to express those feelings, that I didn't have the right to those emotions, particularly the ones related to being angry about things or upset. If something made me mad, I tucked it away. It was my fault. I did it. If somebody hurt my feelings, I turned it inward. It took me a long time to learn that everybody has a right to tell the truth sometimes, and that truth may involve being legitimately, righteously hacked off about something. It took me a long time to see that telling that truth was a better way of dealing with something that trying to shove it all in a box inside me and ignore it.

I try to live my life by the quote at the top of this entry now. I don't run around bashing people over the head with "The Truth" like a club, but if you ask me, I'm pretty much going to tell you, yes, even if the answer is about that kiss or the cat food I need from Wal-Mart if I know you well enough. If not, you may have to settle for the Noh mask smile. That is another kind of truth, and while you may not find it satisfying, I guess sometimes you should probably just consider yourself lucky and move on.

Migraine Attack

Yesterday I was sitting at my desk trying to get some work done before the end of the week when it felt like someone struck me across the back of the head. I was talking to one of my teacher friends at the time, so luckily I wasn't alone, but it was horrible.

Almost immediately, the Topamax kicked in and so instead of screaming in pain, I was floating outside my body. I don't know which is worse. As always with my headaches, I lost words and started sounding like a three-year old trying to string sentences together. All light became my enemy and my room was way too hot. All I wanted to do was lie down on the tile floor and die.

I managed to get to the drawer where I keep my Maxalt and take one of them, and even though I hate the way they taste and the completely disconnected way I feel after I have to take one, I will say this for them: if I get to them fast enough, they work. I stopped feeling as if the back of my head was being pounded out and started just feeling numb.

I couldn't drive at all, so I was basically trapped at school. Even as impaired as I was, I aware that I shouldn't try to drive. I've done it before, mind you, but as bad as that was yesterday, I couldn't have made sense of the traffic around me or of the basic machinery of running the vehicle. I hate that. I hate the stupification of the headaches. They make me so dependent on others, something I almost never am, something I loathe being.

I called my mother and fortunately she was still in town even though she gets off work earlier than I do. She was able to come and get me, and so I toddled downstairs from my classroom to the waiting minivan with all my stuff like a good little preschool child. I hate these headaches. They take everything from me, my words, my independence.

I came home and got in the bed. Cats, of course, spotted a prone figure and piled up with me, warm and comforting, and since I was inexplicably cold, it was nice. I slept about three hours, got up for awhile to read and eat a comforting bowl of grits, the only thing that didn't sound nasty, then I went back to bed.

Now, after a long night's sleep, everything seems to be reset. Maybe the system is ready for another month of pain-free operation.

My greatest wish for these headaches is that I could find a medicine that wasn't almost as bad as the disease. The Topamax makes me so forgetful, makes me forget names of people and things, and the Maxalt, when I have to take it, shuts me down almost completely. I guess this is all to keep me humble, to remind me that I'm not Wonder Woman after all, and I should just bear it with patience. That's hard for me, though. I'm not known for my patience. Maybe this is my chance to improve.

Seven Hundred Posts

This is my seven hundredth post as a blogger. I suppose I should commemorate this auspicious event in some way, hang a sign, post a banner, put up an interesting picture or something. Maybe.

To tell the truth, until I got ready to post, I didn't even know this one was number 700. I can't believe I've had seven hundred things to say. That's kind of hard to believe.

This little space has been good to me, though. It's been a helpful outlet, and as I look back over the past few years with it, I can see several changes in myself since I first started writing. It's always good to see that kind of thing if nothing else.

As my blog turns 700, I am glad I kept writing it when I considered shutting it down two years ago. I think I really would have missed it. (And Heavens only know what all those poor people constantly searching my blog for Beowulf's Boast would do...)

Used Up

Today I feel used up, like a crumpled piece of notebook paper left under a desk after the last bell, like an empty box of Kleenex waiting to be discarded, hollowed out, useless, everything that was good in me taken, consumed, only the shell left. I know it's a phase that will cycle, but while I'm in it, it's a horrible place to be.

Indifference and apathy are like big heavy boots crushing my spirit, and I don't have the requisite reserves right now to spring back from it. I know better than to focus on it, know better than to let the few distract me from the many, and yet.... I need to recharge somehow; I just don't know how. It's so hard to keep pulling rabbits out of hats sometimes.

I'm just tired. Maybe sleep is the answer. Maybe a night of rest will fix all that's wrong.

Gwendolyn Brooks Poem

This is by Gwendolyn Brooks, and as with many of her wonderful poems, it fills me with that ice-cold fever and admiring longing that makes me wish I'd come up with it myself.


To be in love
Is to touch with a lighter hand.
In yourself you stretch, you are well.
You look at things
Through his eyes.
A cardinal is red.
A sky is blue.
Suddenly you know he knows too.
He is not there but
You know you are tasting together
The winter, or a light spring weather.
His hand to take your hand is overmuch.
Too much to bear.
You cannot look in his eyes
Because your pulse must not say
What must not be said.
When he
Shuts a door-
Is not there_
Your arms are water.
And you are free
With a ghastly freedom.
You are the beautiful half
Of a golden hurt.
You remember and covet his mouth
To touch, to whisper on.
Oh when to declare
Is certain Death!
Oh when to apprize
Is to mesmerize,
To see fall down, the Column of Gold,
Into the commonest ash.