The Weight of Dirt and Light

The Weight of Dirt and Light

Today I am out of clever.

No metaphors. No strategies.

The dishes are piled.

My son coughed all night.

The emails grow like mildew.

And still—

a student laughed like wind through pine

and I felt it.

There are days when all I have

is a walk under the cottonwood,

a minute of sun

on the back porch.

I remember Berry’s heron

standing in still water—

how nothing in the poem flinched.

I touch the dirt.

Not metaphor.

Just dirt.

I let it remind me

that I came from something

older than school,

wider than policy.

Before I was a teacher,

I was someone’s child,

sitting in the grass,

making nothing

but room.