My friend cried today and said, "I asked the Assistant Principal how we could teach a work ethic to kids who had never been loved, kids who no one got up for. I can rise out of my bed because someone rose out of theirs."

I don't know what to tell her. But I will say that the child, who as a first grader inspired me to write this poem (which is not at all factual but merely a teacher's composite of sadness), today ran past his cheering teammates onto the floor of the Madison High School basketball court: an eighth grader at Harmony Elementary School, a starter in the tournament game; and his eyes were bright and his head was high and we Harmony fans in the audience--the parents of his teammates, his teachers, his aides--we clapped and roared and shouted his name. And you know, I think, for a few seconds, this clumsy world of ours was maybe just a little corner of heaven.

Touching

at school is against the rules,

so when a spike-haired

 

first grader in need

butts up against your hip,

 

don’t you wrap your arms

round his skinny bones, don’t you

 

cup his skull in your palms,

smooth a knuckle up his baby cheek:

 

he’s got lice, he’s got AIDS;

you kiss him, you die,

 

or worse: late nights, he’ll hunch up small,

stare into some laugh show

 

and whisper what no half-pissed dad

cares to hear from his wife’s

 

kid at the end of a long day

of nothing, when sleep

 

is the only country,

anywhere else, terror:

 

a father you’ve marked

before, slouching into parent night,

 

two hands trembling

along his thighs like birds

 

shot down,

black eyes wary as a bull’s:

 

he blinks at the butcher,

you smile, you fold

 

your unheld hands;

what roils in his wake is the one

 

you won’t teach

to beg an answer from love.

[first published in the Beloit Poetry Journal; a PDF is available on the journal's website]