S.E.W. Smith
A lockdown drill is no way
to spend your morning.
You sit and you wait,
steering students from
veering too much
foreward or too much lee –
while you wait for the
All Clear from
the Principal’s Lighthouse.
No way to spend your morning, that’s certain.
But, you counter, neither is
sitting at a child’s memorial,
or laying down in the coffin yourself.
You say this as if to chide me,
your tongue a wagging finger,
As if
I would rather be doing
one
or
the other.
Your false duality
shows the weakness
of your mind,
dark roots revealing a cheap dye-job of
pseudo-intellect.
No, I have to explain if I want
to engage with you –
Neither choice is a good one,
but absence
of the former
does not precipitate
the latter.
Whole nations live without
either scenario
darkening their doors.
Societies entire smile,
albeit sometimes wearily,
as their offspring
spring home from school,
having spent their days
untargeted.
Do you remember living in that land?
Have you travelled as far
through time
as I
that you can close your eyes
and open them,
wide,
and see schoolyards,
unprotected?
Not because teachers were fools
but because families
were wise?
I am a teacher. I chose this
happy task.
There are days that stand
tall and joyous
where the epiphany dawns
or the hesitant smiles
or the bully withholds the taunt.
Those days leaven the harder grains of times
of recalcitrance
and casual cruelty
unique to the young
(and to the old who do not grow).
But I do more than teach,
As your fond cliches
point out.
In that seat is a boy
who goes home unwanted
(so he thinks) –
I am his sounding-board.
In that seat, a girl
who sees in me the only man
who does not hit her.
I am her relief.
Over there is a girl
who entered school
a boy.
I am the first adult of the day to use her proper name.
None of that is teaching.
All of that is teaching.
And you,
who put upon me
hats to wear
and shoes to fill
forget that I am already
fully clothed.
I am already a teacher,
and that is
a great sufficiency.
And now you want me to play The Shield?
to be the buckler,
the heavy chain-mail coat?
You ask me to be the most un-secret service,
and turn my harp into a sword?
I think you do.
But you forget
that,
to be a saint,
the first requirement
is to die.
- S.E.W. Smith, March 8th 2018