september september

Transformations of September

September, like a river
A swift-dripping slip of silver
A stealthy dewdrop
Dying in the sun

September, a chill of dusk
On the slowly fading green,
Lost in the myriad of orange and umber
That makes me question tomorrow’s color.

September, and I’m a year older
With brighter eyes to capture
The days around me;
Changing like a dream.

It was September that once
Welcomed me to the world
Eager to go, I couldn’t wait
For November’s sweet embrace

The first September, I saw goldenrod
And migrating geese in the sky,
And I waited in my incubator
For my lungs to learn to breathe.

There are Septembers I’ve cherished
And some I’ve grown to fear
As winter pulls up the covers
And the leaves lie down to bed.

September tastes of eagerness.
A breath of the future
That spawns the whispers of adulthood
And shivers of the unknown.

And soon as I write this
September too will fade
Like a little frozen stream
Stands still in the cold.


On Pedagogy and Doubts

It’s a Saturday, and I’m trying catch up
Keeping my eyes off the window, I read
Hoping to learn
How to be a teacher.

I have all the essentials:
A book on my lap, pushed down to my knees
To make room for the amber-eyed tabby cat
Asleep and purring hard.

I like to test myself with worries
And weigh them against the benefits
Of reading and thinking at all—
I have to admit I’m afraid.

Afraid the paint on my fingers
Will fail to create meaning
And in all this education
I’m absorbing less than ever.

My eyes blur the words on the page,
As a liquid line of neon
Covers the thick curves of letters
As though to prove their worth.

This is book learning
Metacognition—these authentic goals
But I just write and read
And it never becomes real.

I don’t even want to breathe
Without permission
I never learned to think
Critically

Differentiation,
Cognitive objectives
Splayed, flailing across
The pages of these textbooks.

Transform, transform
I say, “This vocabulary means nothing.”
And my doubts, like heavy curtains
Whisper: I don’t want to be a teacher

I feel my own learned helplessness
My stereotypes, crawling over me like ants
How can I teach without believing this—
Pegagogy?

I just want to be an expert
An artist, with paint in the creases of my hands
I just want to share—knowledge
My transformations.

i love dirt, pt 1 & 2

Decomposition

Gritty against my teeth /
I feel the earth.
It shifts beneath my palms,
Leaving the imprint
Of each blade of grass.

A prickly stem scratches my arm,
Hot and alive,
Like some strange insect.
It struggles against my fingers;
It bends toward the sun.

Blade of grass – she
Grew up out of this crumbly earth,
Like me, a slender weed
Eager to grow tall and pleasing,
Swift and straight and sweet.

I brush aside the leaves
And reach through to find
A chicken bone, whiter than a pebble:
Once discarded from the table
It still bears the marks of my teeth.

How carefree we suppose it was
“It must be so easy
To be only a child”
Yet everything was so heavy and new --
Reality so rarely glimpsed.

I can show you a picture, now:
Here is my little farm (Quaint and Peaceful),
Where Dad grew broccoli and cabbages
All with the taste of rocks
Clinging to my molars.

I knew everything then
All so difficult to explain.
But I held the proof in my bloodstream
That decomposition creates life
And growing, still I decompose.

I was an only child /
Playing in the dirt.
Now it is so easy to tell you
How simple and serene
It must have been – it must have seemed.



DIRT pt. 1

This is the dirt I gathered
The dirt I bought at Agway
And sprinkled across my floor
Filling flower pots
And hoping the seeds would grow.

This is the dirt on my palms
Dirt that doesn’t even smell
It’s missing that froggy scent,
As green as the grass
Hiding in roadside ditches.

This dirt is so synthetic
A uniform brown—not umber, not sienna
A dry, dead crumble, it is easily scattered
Dispersed by the wind
Our approximation of the earth:
Only acceptable when packaged.



Eating Dirt

Rocks are everywhere
That’s why they call it the endless mountains
Dad says.

We’re under the sun
Grasping the crabgrass that weaves
Along the rows of green beans.

The mailman’s tires kick up dust
His passage rumbles across the rock shelf
It’s 3pm.

We move to the tomato plants
Their soft-skins warm from the sun
Prickly stems graze my arms.

Among the pebbles I find buttons, bones, .22 shells
These make good whistles
When held to chapped lips.

Under my fingernails brown ribbons
Burrow their way into my bloodstream
Endless mountains’ dirt