I Had A Teacher

Caught in the middle,
caught in the view,
our perspective is limited.
Billions of galaxies above,
each with billions of stars within,
are apprehended by minds
freshly emerged,
fueled by stardust.




I had a teacher, Mrs. Wimer, for 1st and 2nd grade who was missing her lower right forearm. In spite of this she taught two grades at once in a one-room school house. She was teacher, principal, cafeteria staff and maintenance crew all in one. She kept the coal stove in the center of the room stoked in the winter, played fly-to-the-moon with us on our imaginary rocket (an old log) in the playground and made school work papers by some sort of primitive "copier" that consisted of hard gel in a cake pan inked with a roller and covered with a typed stencil.

I don’t remember much of the formal lessons Mrs. Wimer taught but I remember her taking us to do rubbings from the tombstones in the cemetery that bordered the school yard and wondering, “Just how old are these graves, anyway? How long ago, exactly, was the Revolution?” I remember collecting elderberries from which we squeezed juice to create a red ink to use with a quill and wondering, “If this comes from berries, where does blue ink come from?” I remember crushing sandstones and sifting the result through a screen and wondering, “Is the difference between rock and earth really just size? How small can a rock get before it’s no longer rock?”

I regularly think how grateful I am that I was taught to read but I am grateful, too, for having been taught to observe, experiment and wonder.