The Teacher

I'm posting two more prose poems from the new sequence. I'm not sure what to call it, but I'll probably come up with something.

A month ago I ran into an old teacher at a bookstore. I hadn't seen him in years. He reminded me of Blake's Jehovah. The second poem is about him.


THE FRIEND

Our Friend has been waiting for thousands of years.
He was the shy girl standing at the edge of the
playground, the woman in her twenties that you
never quite saw. He was the wind rising in the
nest, the light in the East that suddenly woke the
jays and crows. When we look at the earth we
remember his face.

Each time we wake we have this new chance in the
world. Swallows land on the grave of the old holy
man. Hands that open in forgiveness grow young
and supple again.



THE TEACHER

Yesterday I felt a sudden love for an old teacher
I hadn’t seen in many years. He stood with two
canes, his white hair and beard as wild as Blake’s
Jehovah. We talked--he wife gone 10 years, his
father one-hundred years old--and the years
unraveled in the wind.

How many old fathers do we carry inside us?
Surely, given the chance I would carry this man
down to the River Styx, place two coins, grieve
again for what the world has lost and forgotten.
I would tell Charon “No matter what, take care
of this man,” as the boat slides silently across the
unknown waters.

(Copyright 2007, Allan Cooper)