27/30: prompts include writing a letter, using birdsong, among others.

Dear Andrea:

Things are good here.  The weather

has gone hot again, and the rains

should start back up soon.  My new job

is hard and I love it; two of my students

have now written poems.  Isn’t that

some kind of particular magic?  There are birds

that I listen to every night; I’ve been trying

to place their call.  One sound, one high

syllable just now, then again, and again

time to time and if I stand on my apartment

rooftop I can hear it echoing

                                                across town.  I haven’t

managed to actually see one of these birds.

I read yesterday an idea that a teacher

cannot really teach, that the student must learn

on their own, that all the teacher can do

is encourage the learning.  If that’s true, two

of my students have managed to learn

to write poems all on their own

and I’ve never seen a one of these birds.

Their call ends in an E-sound.  One night

I decided it was THREE.  THREE.  THREE.

I think about what I’m learning here, and who,

if anyone, is my teacher.  I go up

to the roof to escape the subtropical heat

if it is not raining and look out

at every sleeping window and marvel at the lives

they all contain.  One day soon a student

will give me a third poem, then a fourth

and I want to say I have taught children

to read but surely I only helped them

to learn.  What a precise alchemy it is,

and I watch as their little eyes solve

the squiggles, as their tiny mouths move

and all the right sounds come out and in

the night I reach out for these birds I cannot name

and I grasp them and tie my worries to their

little bird feet and let go, learning to watch them fly

FREE.  FREE.  FREE.