Throwback Poem: - A Poem Written By a Fool Stranded in Snow, 2011, Trying To Get to Fairfield

Midwest Storm, 2011 - Somehow I made it out

TGIF, but first I am doing the last of my workshops for Trumbull K-5 teachers and because it is elementary school, I tried to look through presentations I made in Kentucky, when I stumbled across one I made when interviewing for my current job at Fairfield University. I was in Madison, Wisconsin trying to get to Syracuse to catch a train to NYC, and then to Fairfield. A blizzard hit. It was awful, but somehow I got on a Greyhound, found my way to Chicago, and flew into NYC instead. From there, a cab was sent to fetch me and brought me to the search chair's home so she could do my laundry. The suit I had was dirty from my presentation in Wisconsin.

La de da. I ended up putting together a poetry teaching demonstration (the Magic Box one) and this is the end product I came up with. It cracks me up, because I remember the stress of traveling, but not the presentation I gave.

I guess it worked.

A Poem From Chicago to Fairfield

I can be the spit of spoken words -

a teacher who preaches, a preacher who teaches

    and searches in notebooks with grinding teeth...

caramel cheesecake doodles help me to breathe

those penned words just out of reach,

as I write, a Star-Bellied Sneetch,

     lost on the highways of the midwest, 

heading east.

I’ve done my best, 

scraping by the scatter-skip of scripted skies

in the protest of chanting teachers,

the truths and their lies,

sprawled in 21st century support of new friends,

our cries scrawled in our educational potpourri, 

with curiosity, of twirled rhizomes 

in a collection of whirled miles.

In a winter of cancelled flights, 

there are always the Connecticut smiles. 

I hit the pillows 

barely hanging by a rope, 

a dope of wet slush riding Greyhound buses,

listening to digital voices and cancelled flight hushes

while John Lithgow sings I needed a lil’ more pep...

(busy-buzzing with every step on the pavement,

knowing I’d rather walk, barefoot, in the sunny sand).

I needed to catch a flight, however...

I need to land. I arrived to Fairfield and am feeling grand).

To empty the ocean like a madman with a fork. 

to see the boulder..,the hill and to push forward, Bry-dork.

wiffleball weekends and little league goes in the heart.

A new day will come and it will be easier to start

    I am just a fool bringing voice to another school

    where I find it cool to provide a new set of wings 

   so youth can fly and writing can sing.

And I scribble this poem (amongst other things) ...

waiting for tomorrow, to see what it brings.

I'm still a fool. Seems appropriate I found it today.