Where Were You?

I spent my morning at Mountain Fold Books with Dave Reynolds, creative writing teacher at the Fountain Valley School.  We debated line breaks. He talked about the allure of azure and other Latinates, while encouraging us to stick to the direct and honest Anglo-Saxon for imagery.  Then we read a poem called Where I Was by Dan Brown (not that Dan Brown), in which the author recalls where he was the day Kennedy was shot.  After that came a poem written by one of his high school students, which was modeled after Where I Was.  Her poem was, appropriately titled:  Where I Was, only it told the story of where she was on 9-11.  Then we wrote poems about where we were, on some significant date in history.  There is something about being given a form, a structure, and fitting your story into it, that is not cheating, but rather it is liberating within a constraint.  I think we have forgotten what it means to learn by imitation of the masters.  Anyway, here is mine.  It is titled, of course:

Where I Was

I was sitting in the front row of all

Places.  My eighth grade algebra class

Was solving for x in silence: the

Way Mr. Gunther liked it.   We feared his

Citizenship grade.  Every

Time you talked, he made a red x by

Your name in his always-open

grade-book. 5 x’s equalled 1 grade

deduction, 10 x’s equalled 2, and so on

in predictable function form.

The equation I don’t remember much

About:  your basic exercise

In keeping everything

Balanced.  How whatever you

Do to one side, you have to do

To the other. Algebra is nothing

If not just. The memorable thing

Was that the PA came on.  How our

Secretary began, “Attention, students”-

But not the announcement I expected.  Not

How the after-school dance was

Canceled. Not lunch menu changes.  Not

that the volleyball players

were to be dismissed after 5th period -

None of that. What the words amounted to

Wasn’t the worst thing: not

"President Reagan has been shot."

But rather that I had cheered.  Half the

Class erupted into applause.

Mr. Gunther, for the first and

Only time that year, closed his

Gradebook, stepped out from behind

His desk, and talked to us-angrily but with 
Conviction-about something other

Than solving equations in two variables.

That day,  I learned that compassion

Should always come before

Politics, and that citizenship means more

Than keeping silent and avoiding red x’s.