There are many things for which I'm grateful to Tim Murphy. One of them is the fact that he introduced me to the work of Suzanne Doyle. I had never read her--a confession of ignorance on my part!--until Tim, during one of those long screenhouse conversations that have taught me so much, mentioned her as one of the most gifted poets he knew.
I have Suzanne's "Calypso," and am adding to this thread's selection of her work a wonderful poem that hits me where I hurt, because it's a "teacher poem." It speaks to that sense we all have in the classroom sometimes, when a students clearly needs more from us, something different from us, than we can give, and maybe more than anybody can give. I love the way the scene is created in only 12 lines, and the tenuousness of the encounter that is hardly an encounter at all:
For a Student
The bell rings and they stampede for the door,
Except for you, with one quick question more,
Each fine point born of heart's distress,
Each fine point torn from your tender breast.
And though I answer to the point, I see
That is not not what you want of me.
Now I must say, and learn to mean it too,
"Be careful what you set your heart to do;
It's likely it will happen. Let Romance go
And then, at least, I'll teach you what I know.
This will not cure what lately seems to ail you,
But neither will it ever come to fail you."
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