Session+2+Poem+Among+Children




 * ==**Among Children** ==

I walk among the rows of bowed heads – The children are sleeping through fourth grade so as to be ready for what is ahead, the monumental boredom of junior high

and the rush forward tearing their wings loose and turning their eyes forever inward. These are the children of Flint, their fathers work at the spark plug factory or truck

bottled water in 5 gallon sea-blue jugs to the widows of the suburbs. You can see already how their backs have thickened, how their small hands, soiled by pig iron, leap and stutter even in dreams. I would like to sit down among them and read slowly <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">from //The Book of Job// until the windows <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">pale and the teacher rises out of a milky sea <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">of industrial scum, her gowns streaming <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">with light, her foolish words transformed <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">into song, I would like to arm each one <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">with a quiver of arrows so that they might <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">rush like wind there where no battle ranges <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">shouting among the trumpets. Ha! Ha! <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">How dear the gift of laughter in the face <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">of the 8 hour day, the cold winter mornings <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">without coffee and oranges, the long lines <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">of mothers in old coats waiting silently <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">where the gates have closed. Ten years ago <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">I went among these same children, just born, <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">In the bright ward of the Sacred Heart and leaned <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">down to hear their breaths delivered that day, <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">burning with joy. There was such wonder <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">in their sleep, such purpose in their eyes <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">closed against autumn, in their damp heads <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">blurred with the hair of ponds, and not one <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">turned against me or the light, not one <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">said, I am sick, I am tired, I will go home, <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">not one complained or drifted alone, <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">unloved, on the hardest day of their lives. <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">Eleven years from now they will become <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">the men and women of Flint or Paradise, <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">the majors of a minor town, and I <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">will be gone into smoke or memory, <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">so I bow to them here and whisper

<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">all I know, all I will never know.

<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">"Among Children" by Philip Levine published in //Learning by Heart:// <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">//Contemporary American Poetry About School//, Anderson and Hasler, <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 280px; text-align: left;">eds. (1999). ||