This report is from Annemarie in Maine:
Ben,
I’ve really been enjoying reading the blog this week. I have to admit that i really don’t create time for it when I’m teaching. But since I’m not teaching this week, I’ve been gobbling it up. I’ve been doing really well with my classes. I feel a new confidence and comfort level with teaching. It’s the kind of feeling where I feel like if I didn’t have anything planned I’d be just fine. I don’t normally focus on output but I have to say that my 8th graders whom I’ve taught for 3 years, are just DYING to speak. And when I let them, they do, and do it well. Anyway, I wanted to share this poem with you because I was reminded of it when you posted your reflection about the language of the trees…
To be of use
BY MARGE PIERCY
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.