So why did you become a teacher? (Poem)
So why did you become a teacher?
Numbers waltz in an elusive dance,
A maze of fractions, caught in trance,
Equations twist, formulas obscure,
Patterns that hide, never quite sure.
So why did you become a teacher?
Words get tangled, meanings stray,
Conclusions drawn in a literal way,
Vocabulary drifts like tides at bay,
Long passages lead minds into the fray.
So why did you become a teacher?
Sentences falter in a silent storm,
Nouns and verbs lost in a swirling swarm,
A labyrinth where grammar deforms,
Punctuation refusing to conform.
So why did you become a teacher?
Lines on maps that blur and confound,
Systems of order where logic is drowned,
Latitude shifts without making a sound,
Coordinates vanish before they are found.
So why did you become a teacher?
Layers of knowledge, difficult to weave,
Paths through the body, hard to perceive,
Bones that remember what minds disbelieve,
Breath in the spaces I could not retrieve.
So why did you become a teacher?
Symbols and systems, a cryptic refrain,
Logic dissolves in a complex domain,
A thought almost caught, then gone again,
A lesson rewritten in silence and strain.
So why did you become a teacher?
Raise your hand, get it wrong.
Raise it high, please, just raise it at all.
Better a whisper than silence too long,
Better a stumble than never a call.
So why did you become a teacher?
The mirror of self, clouded and dim,
Seeking a shape at the edge of the brim,
A name half-spoken, a light growing slim,
A question reflected, but never let in.
So why did you become a teacher?
Sit and stay, feel confined,
A presence in class, undefined,
Another face they fail to find,
Why another mark they leave behind?
So why did you become a teacher?
Find me.
See me.
Be me.
Reach me.
Why did you become a teacher?
To teach, not just to teach, but to learn,
Really learn,
About the how and the why,
Offering the guidance I, too, yearn.