>The Waning Season
>Today was a late fall day dressed up as a summer day. The temperature was unseasonably warm. As I was conducting a poetry lesson, the children looked longingly outside. Finally we escaped and made the trek to a wooded nature trail, complete with two wooden bridges and a stream–something the city children found remarkable. Returning to the classroom, they ran up the big grassy hill, suddenly happy to be children on a rare moment of freedom on a day that felt like June. This, too, is poetry. They listed what they saw on their ride to the school–cows, pumpkins, farms, fields. This, too, is poetry. A soft-spoken girl read the poems in Spanish after I read them in English. Everyone was so quiet, we could hear the murmur of the wind outside. This, too, is poetry.
There are choices–how to find the hours it takes to be a writer, whether or not teaching is worth the incredible amount of time it takes, if any of this makes a difference. Watching the faces of students as they are lulled by words is what every poet wishes for. It is the balance–how much to give and how much to save for my own work. I believe this is important work–writing, teaching. I want to unnumb students and give them back words that express humanity, empathy, observation.
Literary Imaginings by Lisa C. Taylor 