1997 Wahluke

Mis Sonrisas

Each day

the sun rises gently,

with a whisper of deference,

and a shudder of 

anticipation.

The implicit simplicity of manners

is not lost on the horizon

but beams happily up

from row after row after row after row after row after row...

each shaft of light 

reflects a different image

here I see proud, strong, and cooperative,

now silly, sweet and secrective.

There is grinning and slouching

now alert, now drowsy.

Monkey faces, stretch their lips, twist their eyebrows

around their chubby cheeks.

Tappity tap--confused and frustrated: defeated becomes

clear, focused: victorious.

Sullen and silent, cell reorganization, chemical alterations

clear, sure, excitable wow!

Moving from a world of their own,

to my realm,

and back again.

Quite sure they won't miss a thing.

Quite happily, they are one energy.

When, as nature requires, the sun

sets...

I will ache with the wish to have given more to my sonrisas who only 

stayed for a day.

CM 1997

bring me a rock and I will know who you are

Ok that is a weird start. My intention here is to share all of the poems I wrote about students over the past 20 years in the classroom that I felt really captured their essence.

Over the years, I have felt, rightly or not, that I know my students very well. I am honored when I read their essays or poems, or anything where their voice comes through.  I feel it is similar to asking for a rock from Paris rather than a T-shirt.

 I don't want gifts when friends and family travel, what I really want is a rock from their trip. I want them to be in a beautiful place, think of me, and pick up a rock from  underfoot.  Then I feel as if I was there. 

similarly,

I want the students to give me something genuine from themselves, and that's what I wanted the most---more important to me on a human level than a formulaic essay or straight A work. It was the rocks my students brought me that helped me know them and celebrate them. And to me, that is the most important part of my work as an English teacher.

And in this blog, I will share my students with you.