"Our nation has found herself confronted by a great problem dealing with a people who neither know nor understand the underlying principles of our civilization, yet who, for our mutual happiness and liberty, must be brought into accord with us ... through the common schools." ~ Adeline Knapp, one of 530 American teachers who arrived in the Philippines in 1901 aboard the USS Thomas; quoted in Jonathan Zimmerman's Innocents Abroad: American Teachers in the American Century A name is a bright line you can follow. The tiniest flying creature leads out of a wood, winking. You have no recollection of how you got there, but you trust it completely. Commit its outline to memory; understand that certain precious things have to be hidden for centuries in order for their shine not to blind unopened eyes. Under the trees, in a make- shift schoolroom, a teacher writes letters on a slate; but what is a bat that isn't a body with wings opening like a fan? What is a ceiling that isn't a sky ornamented with unchanging directions? Wind bells a different diction, passing beneath the honeysuckle. Smoke from a wood fire carries the grammar of our prayers from this world to the afterlife. There, even if our names have been changed, the ancestors will know how to call us.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.