Singing Loudly

Sunday, August 15, Erin will turn 30.

Happy Birthday!

After much debating with myself over the best birthday poem for you, I decided on this one. With your passion for life and for teaching and for learning you will, for sure, teach many students (if not the English language than certainly the beauty of literature and writing) one word at a time.

Teaching English for an Old Composition Book by Gary Soto

My chalk is no longer than a chip of fingernail,
Chip by which I must explain this Monday
Night the verbs "to get," "to wear," "to cut."
I'm not given much, these tired students,
Knuckle-wrapped from work as roofers,
Sour from scrubbing toilets and pedestal sinks.
I'm given this room with five windows,
A coffee machine, a piano with busted strings,
The music of how we feel as the sun fallas,
Exhausted from keeping up.

I stand at
The blackboard. The chalk is worn to a hangnail,
Nearly gone, the dust of some educational bone.
By and by I'm Cantiflas, the comic
Busybody in front. I say, "I get the coffee."
I pick up a coffee cup and sip.
I click my heels and say, "I wear my shoes."
I bring an invisible fork to my mouth
And say, "I eat the chicken."
Suddenly the class is alive --
Each one putting on hats and shoes,
Drinking sodas and beers, cutting flowers
And steaks -- a pantomine of sumptuous living.

At break I pass out cookies.
Augustine, the Guatemalan, asks in Spanish,
"Teacher, what is 'tally-ho'?"
I look at the word in the composition book.
I raise my face to the bare bulb fore a blind answer.
I stutter, then say, "Es como adelante."
Augustine smiles, then nudges a friend
In the next desk, now smarter by one word.

After the cookies are eaten,
We move ahead to prepositions --
"Under," "over," and "between,"
Useful words when la migra opens the doors
Of their idling vans.
At ten to nine, I'm tired of acting,
And they're tired of their roles.
When class ends, I clap my hands of chalk dust,
And two students applaud, thinking it's a new verb.
I tell them adelante,
And they pick up their old books.
They smile and, in return, cry, "Tally-ho."
As they head for the door.


Thanks for the chocolate chip cookies Erin.