Rain
A teacher asked Paul
what he would remember
from third grade, and he sat
a long time before writing
"this year somebody tutched me
on the sholder"
and turned his paper in.
Later she showed it to me
as an example of her wasted life.
The words he wrote were large
as houses in a landscape.
He wanted to go inside them
and live, he could fill in
the windows of "o" and "d"
and be safe while outside
birds building nests in drainpipes
knew nothing of the coming rain.
Commentary
I don’t know much about the poetic merits of this modern piece. But what I do know is that Naomi takes a stereotype, turns it upside down and shows what strange waters can flow from the most unexpected of places if you can see them. I have always known that a dunce is not so a dunce if you don’t look for them. So many of these so-called “dunces” were some of the best friends I had, guys who would gang up & beat seniors who ragged me while “intellectuals” watched in fear. Whenever teachers slapped these “dunces”, I would always want to scream at them, but I had to quietly satisfy myself with splashing ink on their clean shirts and sarees when they weren’t looking. That was once upon a time, but I still fill the windows of my “o”s and “d”s and don’t even leave out the tiny half-moon of “e” ;-)
— Nelson
Biography