Today I was visited by the boy with brown eyes,
wise, deepsoul eyes that gaze inward while looking out,
inward into a world where
things are in rows, and everything is in order,
a place where the air is completely still and
breathing is silent.
He enters my classroom with a flitting stare,
looking for something, searching the air
for yesterday--
but it's today and nothing's the same
nothing's at all the same today,
what with the fire drill--LOUD! too LOUD!
searching eyes desperate, agitated, until--
he sees the dog puppet there on the shelf,
the one that sang a song,
yesterday--
"put it on, put it on, put it on!"
And I do, and he feeds him pieces of a plastic pizza
and I have the dog pretend to chomp the pizza,
and he feeds him all the pieces, one after the other,
and everything is NOW and important
to this brown eyed face.
Yesterday and Today are
connected now,
NOW is real,
NOW is part of his world,
thanks to a dog puppet and
a toy plastic pizza,
and
those
soulful
brown
eyes.
How to Shorten the Line at the Principal’s Office
22 hours ago
3 comments:
Your insight goes deep, my fellow teacher-learner. This is beautiful, not just your being able to see from this child's perspective, but your loving "play" in a busy time, to bring about his desperate need for his own "normalcy."
I often wonder about the mental barriers people live within, and operate from, in varying degrees. If we think it through, we should at least have compassion, if not full understanding, of how others see things.
Oh that we all could have someone in our lives who loved us enough to let us feed the puppet -- if only for a moment -- without judging our need to do so.
Powerful prose Laura and very touching.
Anita
I'm so glad that this special child will have you in his life... I'll bet he'll inspire more prose from all of us this year...
Donna
Post a Comment