Why I Teach

Of course I shouldn’t be here, but I am.  Fortuna can be chary, then charitable like that. I was born of broken pieces. A vessel composed of bladed shards--to touch them was to bleed.  But one did so anyway; he had endured worse before coming upon that deadly disarray that I was when he found me. 

The Japanese have a profound art called Kintsugi; it saves broken pottery by creating new forms, mending the pieces with liquid gold.  This is what he did; he figured out how I could be whole and thus began our journey.  Adhered by golden attention and devotion; Adorned by silver support and praise, I became a poet.  This strange practitioner of Kintsugi hailed from the dead steel town of Monongahela, Pennsylvania rather than Japan.  He was Mr. Jim Demcheck, my high school creative writing teacher.

I was not.

I was not.

I was not.

I was not supposed to be, but I am.  That’s the miracle.  A broken boy became a unified man because there was one who understood his pain; one who had the courage to pick up the pieces. Of course there is more to his story.  I’m sure you have figured; he had been born broken too. 

I teach because I was taught to do so.  I am an English teacher because an English teacher taught me to see myself as a purposeful human being.  He heard me, and when he did so I realized--slowly, so slow that I am still realizing--that I had a voice.  A real voice.  A true voice.  A strong voice.

I was born of broken pieces.  A bird constructed of feathers strewn after a kill.  One--a patient one--poured water into the vessel, breathed life into the form.

There is still a broken boy within me; but that’s truly where the poetry began, and I love him.

And that’s how I was taught. That’s why I teach.

10/2024