Of Twists and Moments

The Jar

The past is a change jar,
waiting dusty on top of the bookshelf.
To be used
when only coins will do,
not for the water bill
or next years’ school supplies.

I’ve broken down the dollars of years
—common and bland and shabby—
to imperishable small change moments:
Quarter pancakes on a snow day
Dime compliments
Penny glances
Nickel smiles
Half-dollar kiss,
rare and precious and interesting.

The way we wash dishes
after everyone goes home:
Worth about $2.17 in various coins.

The jar of change
—a piggy bank of generosity and goodness and love—
waits for days when I’m broke in the present.
When the tax of solitude is too high,
when criticism fines my already-low balance
and tollbooths loom ahead.

And on those poorest todays
I pull out a handful of moments,
turn them over and over until they are worn like pearls.
Coated with a lifetime of dust,
some are bright and new
and others gleam dully, worn with use.

That day when we
That summer when they
That night when I

And though I spend them
they are never gone.

A poem written for and to Period One
(as an example of extended metaphor)

I left my classroom as messy as it’s ever been. Skyscrapers of paper lean against the wall by the door. The desks huddle together in the center of the room, staying where I pushed them out of the way so I could climb on a cabinet and take down curtains covered in two years’ dust. The blue paint on the bulletin boards is starting to chip off, worn away when I removed the hundreds of staples and thumbtacks that held up flyers, grades, ad prices, photos and phone numbers. The furniture that I like is flagged with the blue labels of moving redemption; the rest have gone into exile, supposedly to a furniture graveyard underneath Memorial Stadium. Room 120, chaotic and awaiting new carpet and desks, won’t be resting this summer.

The school year ended like this, loose-ended, some details unresolved, some tasks incomplete. It ended with a sigh and a shrug, teenage-style, on a cloudy day and in the midst of cardboard and labels and packing tape.

It ended with a twist I would have scoffed at if it I’d read it in fiction. After spending a month planning for unemployment, daydreaming about traveling and mourning the loss of this school that I love, I was recalled to my job for the 2009-2010 school year. It is the last-minute reprieve of an author whose essential outlook on life changes mid-sentence, who doesn’t go back to rewrite the book but instead leaves it as is, strange and inconsistent. And yet, disorienting as it is, I am grateful. Questions of where I belong return to the background for a while; against all odds, I’m coming back for another year.

Like a cloudy last day of school, I’m excited and a little gloomy. I’m returning, but three of my favorite colleagues are not, a reality lost on me when all four of us were departing together. So it’s impossible to write a neat ending for the school year, as much as the writer in me desires to tie it up with a few words and an overall theme, or as a friend puts it, a “moral” for the year. I can only plead that lately I’ve been learning that reality defies this kind of metaphorization; in the end, I’m left with a scattered jar of moments to ponder in all their variety.

Period Four shrieks in rage when the bell dismissed class during The Merchant of Venice, leaving Antonio awaiting the legal doom of Shylock’s knife. They leave with the reluctant confession that they’re interested.

An assembly line of Friends of the Cascade fill our April newspaper with flyers that said “Josy, will you go to prom with me?” from one of the editors-in-chief to our artistic layout assistant.

I spend a 23-hour day with the Class of 2009, punctuated with an original song by one of our teachers, the first speech I’ve ever written, and a standing ovation from the students I’ve known and loved best so far.

The non-senior remainder of my journalism staff creates a farewell newspaper for me in three days, after which they declare, “We did all this! We can do the paper next year!”

Seniors on a post-graduation vacation call my classroom to see if I did indeed get hired back. They pass a cell phone around to confirm the news.

I moderate the poetry blog, kept up by a few students who call themselves the Ninth Wall Rebels, and discover genuine talent and thought-provoking dialogue, realizing once again that ninth graders are cleverer than anyone—even me—ever guesses at the beginning.

I’ve loved these days. Thanks, and have a spectacular summer.