"As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; / [ . . . ] Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: / Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; / Selves -- goes itself; 'myself' it speaks and spells, / Crying 'What I do is me; for that I came'." --Gerard Manley Hopkins

12 March 2011

"Lit Instructor"

I ran across this lovely poem by William Stafford in Parker Palmer's The Courage to Teach:


"Lit Instructor"


Day after day up there beating my wings

with all the softness truth requires

I feel them shrug whenever I pause:

they class my voice among tentative things,


And they credit fact, force, battering.

I dance my way toward the family of knowing,

embracing stray error as a long-lost boy

and bringing him home with my fluttering.


Every quick feather asserts a just claim;

it bites like a saw into white pine.

I communicate right; but explain to the dean--

well, Right has a long and intricate name.


And the saying of it is a lonely thing.



--from American Poems

1 comment:

Millie said...

how appropriate! :-)

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