March

I was with an old school friend the other week, talking about teachers who had influenced us, and about how the things they taught us were not the things they thought they were teaching us, and thought I'd share this poem I wrote some time ago. It's called Geography Lesson.

Our teacher told us one day he would leave
And sail across a warm blue sea
To places he had only known from maps
And all his life had longed to see.

The house he lived in was narrow and grey,
But in his mind’s eye he could see
Sweet scented jasmine clinging to the walls
And green leaves burning on an orange tree.

He spoke of the lands he longed to visit
Where it was never drab or cold
And we couldn’t understand why he never left
And shook off the school’s stranglehold

Then half way through his final term
He took ill and he never returned
And he never got to that place on the map
Where the green leaves of the orange trees burned.

The maps were pulled down from the classroom wall,
His name was forgotten- it faded away,
But a lesson he never knew he taught
Is with me to this day:

I travel to where the green leaves burn
To where the ocean’s glass-clear and blue,
To all the places my teacher taught me to love
But which he never knew.

bp