“Come on, my enemy; we have yet to wrestle for our lives, but many hard and miserable hours must you endure until that period shall arrive.” - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein Twenty years ago I was going to change the worldwith a dry erase markerand a classroom full of gadgets Today the markers are just drythe gadgets are brokenand stolenparts strewn across the classroom floor It has never been too muchIt has always been too muchA race of endurancethat should by now have caught its stride There once was a nobility to this professionNow I say too often Stop cutting your textbook with the scissorsand remind them what they are not allowed to lick This is meant to be the plateau sudden end of uphill strugglewhere it should all be easy nowwhere expertise should carry The slope is steeper now than everstill just half way to retirementall the tread worn off the shoesnever sure when the next step will slip Perhaps the summit is just around the bendthe grand vista I have been climbing for persevering all this timeI tell myself this to keep going I have done this for twenty yearswith twenty untaught still in the clouds aboveif level ground does not lie aheadand the rumors proving less true with each step There are just so many times one can say It can’t get any worsebefore it stops getting worseor it kills them, and it might at that If it does, I hope they find me littered on the floor of my classroomamong the paper airplanes broken pencilscapless markers and abandoned microscope slides If it does, I hope no one will sayI died doing what I lovedI hope they know, If that was trueI’d have died in the middle of this poem
I have missed reading your teacher poems so freaking much <3
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