Teacher

TEACHER

When you teach me,

your hands bless the air

where chalk dust sparkles            

And when you talk,

the six wives of Henry VIII

stand in the room like bridesmaids,

or the Nile drifts past the classroom window,

the pyramids baking like giant cakes

on the playing fields.

You teach with your voice,

so a tiger prowls from a poem

and pads between desks, black and gold

in the shadow and sunlight,

or the golden apples of the sun drop

from a branch in my mind’s eye.

I bow my head again

to this tattered, doodled book and learn what love is.