(I am participating in National/Global Poetry Month as I continue to write small poems each morning. – Kevin)
Day Twenty Six: This Remembered Place
Knowing as we do now
what it is we did not know then,
what more might we have gathered
if we had that time again?Your favorite pencil,
maybe, the one with
the short, sharpened stub and
bright blue eraser?Your sticker packet, perhaps,
its neon artwork stubbornly
affixed to locker doors
and desks?Your go-to comic books,
I’d ponder, the ones you’d hide
inside your textbook, as if we
never looked?Or your much-loved pink glove,
with holes in the fingers,
its soft fabric shredded
by tag and run?Every one – all of us —
left without the otherfrom this remembered place
now narrowed down
to panels on a screen:pixelated by presence,
illuminated by absence
Note: I took part in a Saturday writing workshop of ‘teachers as writers” through the Western Massachusetts Writing Project. We started in a video chat, moved offline for an hour or so to write, gathered back into small online response groups, and ended up back together in a large gathering. There were prompts we could use, if we wanted, and I used the “If I Had Known” prompt for my poem, of remembering the classroom space now reduced to video chatting.
Peace (in presence and absence),
Kevin