Write A Poem Today

“Write a poem today,” 

said the stranger I met waiting for my lunch, 

looking me straight in the eyes, 

demanding acceptance of the challenge. 

“Okay,” I said. “I will try.”

How to begin a poem 

that starts with a goodbye

in a crowded airport terminal 

before the sun has risen? 

My son departs for another ocean

whose salt will mix with freshwater in Mission Bay

and greet his steady oar. 

My oceanic tears held in

until I am back on the road. 

My heart aching with longing 

for time to slow down. 

I leave the city lights 

just as the sun begins to bathe 

the hills that soon become 

soft mountains. 

Ninety minutes from my home is a world away. 

There are more cows than cars. 

There is bible study at the high school

during lunch on Wednesdays. 

I have come on a Thursday. So I will not be saved 

from worrying

about the gentle boy with yin-yangs on his glasses. 

I escape “the soft bigotry

of low expectations”*

for lunch with a friend. 

The friend’s husband is a retired blind Federal judge.

But blindness cannot keep either of them from watching 

open-mouthed

as the civil rights work of their lifetimes 

is systematically smashed to pieces 

in new ways 

every day. 

Still, she tells me they are taking private line-dancing classes

and will dance for the first time with friends in two weeks. 

Her husband is nervous.

Everyone will see he cannot keep a beat. 

But I am stuck on how 

he will not be able to tell 

if anyone else can keep a beat either. 

And I am in love with the idea

of 80-year-olds learning to line dance.

Practicing in their living room.

Leaning toward rhythmic joy.

When they understand the discordant pain of the moment

in ways more acute than most. 

I return to school and hear the tale

of a 4th grade boy - 

new to the country - 

whose new-to-teaching-teacher

tells her whole class 

that he has said she is his girlfriend. 

Weeks earlier I watched this class erupt in applause

when he read aloud in perfect English for the first time. 

Today it took all afternoon to quell his tearsas they flowed from a deep well of shame

that a teacher’s inexperience broke open. 

Then I meet a boy named Oliver

who makes a pirate chicken with a mohawk in art class. 

I tell him I also have a child named Oliver. 

I speak in the present tense. 

It is easy to do and for a moment it brings my youngest back to life.

On a high from that imagined scenario,

I fall for every child making chickens in that room. 

I drive back to the city fueled by deep, delicious, complicated, love. 

The trip is slowed by thousands of people

gathered to witness the cherry blossoms, 

as I did every year 

with my husband, who is now remarried. 

With my children, now my child. 

I notice how my heart strains

but does not fall to pieces

as the flood of memory pushes at its walls. 

I am late to my workshop for high school parents, 

But the group is small, and forgiving. 

I start by asking them to tell me about their treasures: 

their children. 

“Tell me their aspirations.”

“My son’s aspiration

is to stay alive long enough 

as a black boy

to grow up,” one mother says

with a quaking voice.  

She looks me in the eyes.

And all I can do is look back. 

Mother to mother. 

Hoping the love in my heart 

flows up through my eyes

and says the words that fail me.

It is what I want too. 

I want her child to live past 80. 

And learn to line dance with his partner. 

And experience a drive in the late-afternoon sun, 

where love for the world as it is 

eclipses longing for it to be different. 

* from a speech by George W. Bush in 2020 about the No Child Left Behind Act