PROPERTIES OF MATTER

It stunk like somebody dying dozens of eggs,

the children shrieked when the baking soda

plopped into vinegar and the balloons inflated.

He stacked weights on bridge models made of

notebook paper, cardboard and drinking straws,

they cheered loudly as it collapsed and crashed.

“Will it sink, will it float?” with an old fish tank,

“Waves in a Bottle” with cooking oil and water,

amazed at how it always goes back to the top.

They laughed at riddles about the elements,

glued Fruit Loops, Cheerios, and Apple Jacks

on neon colored poster boards to show atoms.

After a week, the water was gone, salt left behind

and it was time for them to put away the books.

The materials and mess are what really mattered.

THE JOY OF SHADOW PUPPETS

Those were the days of record players,

View-Masters, filmstrips, and projectors.

Watching a movie in school meant it had

to be set up carefully, ahead of time by a

teacher who knew how to thread it over

loops, metal frames, rollers, and spindles.

We watched filmstrips and felt honored

when chosen to be the one to turn a knob.

We listened carefully for a narrator to stop

and heard the “boop” from a record player.

At the end of each filmstrip or movie viewing

we’d fall all over each other, like little moths

wanting to get to the screen to try and make

shadow puppets on the wall. It didn’t last long,

as the teacher ended it quickly with her usual-

“All right, all right. That’s enough. Settle down.”

Thirty five years later it’s a new age with 

iPads, X-box, internet, DVD players in cars.

I’m the teacher now and present each lesson

with a laptop, Power Point, and LCD projector.

Strangely,after the advances in technology and

all the time that’s passed, kids still find magic in

trying to make barking dogs or soaring eagles with

their hands, a bulb’s glare and shadows on the wall.

And that's why I pause before shutting off the light.

SET YOUR ALARM

and get up when it goes off is what he says.

But I roll over to go back to sleep every time.

I promise to get up; I even say that I am up.

I pull the covers over my head. I get up finally.

We argue because I don’t have my bag packed

and I need to print an assignment for school.

I stay in the bathroom too long, fixing my hair.

He announces the time to me every five minutes.

I can’t figure out what to wear, I change my shirt.

He yells when I pause to select a song on my iPod.

I forget my keys. My cell phone is uncharged.

I forget to bring the note I need to give a teacher.

I miss the bus and don’t have time to eat breakfast.

I eat a cold pop tart and drink an iced tea drink box

while he drives me to school, he doesn’t talk to me

but says, “the Breakfast of Losers, not champions”.

I sit silently when he tells me all I have to do is

get up ten minutes earlier to fix all these things.

I look out the window when he says to me-

“No telling how many planes and trains you’ll miss.”

I reply with, “Yeah, I know” but we both know

how tomorrow will probably be more of the same.

Most times, I say “Love you Dad” when I get out.

Most times, he says “Love you too, have a good day”.

3:14 PM, DISMISSAL BELL

It is it any wonder the baby boy

born to two teachers waited all day

to decide and come into the world?

Around the time when the book bags

are packed, anxious walkers get let out,

buses get called over the loudspeakers.

Today his parents both had substitutes,

maybe the best reason to be absent.

Finally the doctor pulled him out, after

much pushing by a dehydrated mother

and after much cheering like a football fan

by his father, a man in a green jersey.

Looking at the clock on the hospital wall,

the couple smiled about the time of his birth.

DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE MONEY

I think of where you will go in four years.

I can see you opening up fancy envelopes

in the kitchen with your nervous hands.

I will tell you not to settle, go where you want

and don’t worry about the money, you’ll have

a whole lifetime to deal with these concerns.

I imagine us walking with you across the

campus of the school you dreamed about.

We’ll go to the college bookstore to buy a new

sweatshirt, a hat for me, a coffee mug for Mom.

WATCH OUR EAGLES FLY

He wore his Eagles ties, played the fight song

on the computer, sang loudly, danced around

wearing a plastic bald eagle Halloween mask.

His students laughed, clapped, jumped out of

their seats, strange to see a teacher being just

as foolish as a kid about his favorite football team.

Out of breath, a promise was made to the class-

if they win on Sunday, no homework on Monday.

Instantly the Eagles gained 23 diehard fans, even

the little Giants and Cowboys kids rooted for Philly.

Watching every game, cheering on the outcome.

They bought green folders, notebooks and t-shirts.

A season to remember as they kept winning and

made it to the playoffs, then onto the Super Bowl.

If they win the whole thing, he promised to bring in

a Carvel ice cream cake to celebrate. On Monday,

the children did not look him in the eye as they knew

he must be hurting because of their team’s defeat.

Silently they ate the cake, brought in by the boy,

from the back, who wore his Patriots jersey on Monday.

Like a wake for an old uncle, they remembered the fun

of winning and took away the pain with each spoonful.

THE ART TEACHER

Today, it’s snowing outside his classroom window,

it all feels like some kind of April Fool’s Day joke.

He thinks of those comparisons to Andrew Wyeth,

his use of light and shadows to illuminate the canvas.

All of that, hidden now in the back of the closet behind

bins of old cassette tapes and Christmas decorations.

It bothers him most when he sits in this place all alone,

without his noisy students, his few friends, or his family.

He dreamed of studying in London, Paris, Barcelona,

but ended up back here, where he started 25 years ago.

Surrounded by Mr. Sketch scented markers, crayons,

paper mache, watercolor projects, green modeling clay.

Posters of the Great Ones hang around the room to

provide background on Dali, Cassatt, Kahlo, and Escher.

As a young man, he’d point at them and tell his teacher-

One day you can hang my picture on the wall with them.

SAFE CORNER

How did I get here? and

I went to college for this?
is what came to mind today
as we crouched in the corner,
lights out, windows closed,
shades drawn, sign on floor, door locked.
This is a drill required by the State,
because of what happened in other places.
You saw the news, Columbine, Virginia Tech.

We’ll get creative in coming months,
making code words, what if plans for
rabid dogs, a gas leak, a wandering black bear,
a disgruntled employee, an irate parent-
practicing for the worst of all case scenarios,
the active shooter.

It was much easier when I was growing up,
all we worried about was nuclear annihilation.
Not much you could do about that.
We joked about evacuations, the absurdity of
crouching under a desk and covering your head.

My kids don’t say they’re nervous or scared.
But they ask me-
“What would happen if it were real?
What would happen if some
crazy guy with a gun came into
our room and tried to get us all?”

Well, I suppose I’d beat him senseless with a little green chair.
And because we can laugh together, we know we’ll be all right.

(Photo taken from-
http://www.retroland.com)

BUS STOP EPIPHANY

Sometimes when I see you, you look so grown up.
While on other days, like this morning, you smiled
that same smile from when you were a little baby.
Maybe I noticed it because your face was framed
perfectly by the window of the bright orange bus.

At fourteen, our years are numbered now- four.
Next year, I’ll wait at this same bus stop as you head
to high school, somehow your mother and I’ll get
you through it. But today I thinking too far ahead to
the day when I’ll drove off and look back to see you
standing at the curb, waving in my rear view mirror.

Or I imagine the three of us standing on a platform
at the train station, the Amtrak pulls into Metropark,
to take you south to D.C. or north to Boston. And when
I see you in the window; I’ll see a man with my baby’s smile.

POETRY WITH THE KIDS

(memories of moments,strung together in Tankas)

what’s up with all the
poetry? is what a boy
in the back row said.
Makes you choose precise words and
finish in less time. That’s true.

rhyming is Old School
a fourth grade girl announces
as I introduced
limericks, quatrains, couplets.
Man, free verse is where it’s at.

rappers and rock stars
sit at kitchen tables with their
own rhyming dictionaries
forcing themselves to find words
that rhyme with cheese and mustard

Kilmer, poet from nearby
wrote Trees, killed on World War I
battlefield in France.
A young student says plainly-
Should’ve stuck to poetry.

HER LAST STAND

Halloween is over, so she’ll pull
down the Rubbermaid bins
marked Thanksgiving and get ready
to teach a lesson like its 1977.
She’ll wear a headband with a feather;
a Pocahontas costume from the Party Store,
and put her hair up in braids.
She’ll stand at the classroom door
greet the kids with a raised hand
and say, Ugh, How, Kemo Sabe and
call them all her little braves.

She’s make vests out of paper bags,
War bonnets out of construction paper,
Tom toms out of coffee cans that she saved,
and wampum necklaces out of uncooked ziti.
Room mothers will prepare a snack and paint
streaks of paint on the children’s little cheeks.
They’ll all trace their hands; put beaks on the
thumb’s outline to make a Tom Turkey.
She’ll call them to the rug for a Pow Wow
and tell them to sit “Native American style”.

THE LOVERS

Would I think of them as lovers
if I didn’t see the title? I am a watcher,
an observer, and a storyteller of sorts.
I look for the story behind the picture,
the way I look at two people and wonder
how they ended up being together.

I look at artwork and relate it to a moment
in my life. I remember at twenty, how the two

of us found each other in the greeting card aisle

of the college bookstore. Two acquaintances

from class who had spoken many times, but this
moment, on that day, changed everything for us.

Would I have seen it differently without
About the Painting on the bottom?
Would I have stopped to take a closer look
at the clothes, to interpret the time period
as the age close to Romeo and Juliet?

Would I notice how he was holding
her hand, the gray tones of their skin,
the use of only six colors, rubbed on.
If I had not read the notes, would I have
seen the “strong silent bond between them”?

Would I have thought it a masterpiece
by one of the world’s greatest artists,
if I had not seen his familiar face in a close up?
Black and white gripping his bald head,
staring like a madman at the camera.
Could I have known it was Picasso without
the About the Artist? Nothing clued me in to
his handiwork, nothing political, no images of
death, geometrically disfigured faces,
distorted bodies made of cubes.

Instead, I may have asked,
Is there news of a baby on the way?
Is she about to tell him goodbye?
Is he looking for forgiveness?
Does it really matter if there’s a story
behind this simple painting?
Just two peaceful young people in love.
Does it matter who painted it

if I find it pleasing to look at?

DRIVE THRU NATION

Circle the lot in your Yukons, Escalades, and Armadas.
Cell phones in hand, waiting for the pampered ones
to call and tell you to drive up and get them at the door.

Your children are not made of tough metal or strong fiber.
They’re made of silk, rayon, or that Under Armor material.
Surely they’ll melt like pink and blue circus cotton candy.

Circle the lot in your Caravans, Siennas, and Voyagers.
Dart through the lanes of the congested school parking lot
you’re on a mission to an uninhabited planet, a quest.

The sons are daughters are inside the building, taking exams
to get into the colleges of their dreams, not the in-state
affordable ones that you like, but the fun,out-of-state party schools.

I park my Jeep at the back of the lot; zip up my rain coat,
pull my cap down over my head and go for a stroll in the rain.
Smiling, I wave and yell, “Don’t worry son, after all- it’s only water.”

Image from Google search - http://90ways.com/images/Crit/escalade.jpg