FROM THE BOOKSHELF

On Turning Ten
- Billy Collins

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

Two time Poet Laureate of
the United States, 201-2003

Also responsible for Poetry 180,
which I have placed on the side
bar as a permanent link. It is a
wonderful site, to use in the
classroom, with a new poem
for students daily.


Teaching With Fire, Intrator, Sam M. & Scribner, Megan, Ed.

CHANGING THE WORLD

Periodically, I post an offering from a book called Teaching With Fire, edited by Sam M. Intrator & Megan Scribner. It is not a book that you need to read from front to back. In fact, I tend to browse until something resonates. Todays' offering is credited 'Courtesy of Apple Computer.' I think it was originally a kind of advertisement, but it seems strangely appropriate somehow. 

Think Different

Here's to the crazy ones.

The misfits.

The rebels.

The troublemakers.

The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently.

They're not fond of rules.

And they have no respect for the status quo.

You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them,

disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can't do is ignore them.

Because they change things.

They invent. They imagine. They heal.

They explore. They create. They inspire.

They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy.

How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art?

Or sit in silence and hear a song that's never been written?

Or gaze on a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?

We make tools for these kinds of people.

While some see them as the crazy ones,

we see genius.

Because the people who are crazy enough to think

they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Concessions

Hotel Nights With My Mother
-Linda McCarriston

The hometown flophouse
was what she could afford
the nights he came after us
with a knife. I'd grab my books,
already dreading the next day's
explanations of homework undone
- I ran out of paper - the lies
I'd invent standing in front of
the nuns in the clothes I'd lain in
full-bladdered all night, a flimsy
chair-braced door between us
and the hallway's impersonal riot.

Years later, then, in the next
city, standing before my first class,
I scanned the rows of faces,
their cumulative skill in the
brilliant adolescent dances
of self-presentation, of hiding,
New teacher, looking young, seeming
gullible, I know, I let them
give me any excuse and took it.
I was watching them all

for the dark circled eyes,
yesterday's crumpled costume, the marks
- the sorrowful coloring of marks -
the cuticles flaming and torn.
I made of myself each day a chink
a few might pass through unscathed.

Teaching With Fire (2003).

The Value of Spaces

Fire

What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.
Too much of a good thing,
too many logs
packed in too tight
can douse the flames
almost as surely
as a pail of water would.

So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.

When we are able to build
open spaces
in the same way
we have learned
to pile on the logs,
then we can come to see how
it is fuel, and absence of fuel
together, that makes fire possible.

We only need to lay a log
lightly from time to time.

A fire

grows
simply because the space is there,
with openings
in which the flame
that knows just how it wants to burn
can find its way.

- Judy Brown, Teaching With Fire (2003).