PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

At Madison Park Elementary School,

sixty-nine, seventy---my last, and sixth grade, year,

the teachers often turned their eyes from

the playground's physical bullying,

mostly going on in the distant grassy area;

perhaps unaware that this was noticed by
fearful, even tearful, eyes that had turned to them.
whose ears seemed impervious to their cries of need.

But in the classrooms, their instructions---

or comments on submitted homework---

contained such personalized abuse that lingered

long after playground welts and bruises had faded.

And parents just shrugged their shoulders and said,

"That is just that teacher's personality,"

without regard to how it stunted our personalities.

Six years later, during my senior year---

bringing home 5.0's in the college prep courses;

and, despite parental objection

("You could get a real, paying job with that spare time"),

teaching assistant to the English Department Chair,

lab assistant in the remedial first year biology course---

I could not bring myself to visit old Madison Park:

even the very look of the facility caused chills and gasps.

Even after July tenth of seventy-six:

freed at last from my mundane name,

no longer "Fairy Jerry" as on that playground,

but Starwatcher, the unevolved precedent of Starward;

with all of Channel Twenty-Two around and beside me,
I could not return to that haunted place,

even during its off-season of summer.

What could we have, in those days, done?

Bearing witness, of course, to the established facts;

demanding that prevention and protection

are mandated---not merely a teacher's convenience,  

or choice or election.

Yet considering the paradox,

how the unwanted memory

may affect even my spiritual destiny,

I am gently reminded, by Theology---

in the fullness of Catholicity---

of what our Savior said, during the worst of bullyings,

Father, forgive them, they know not what they do."

Starward