…sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing…

—Galway Kinnell, from “St. Francis and the Sow”

•••

All the years I stood before students
in classrooms, I reminded myself

that I was not their ultimate teacher—
though I doled out assignments and grades.

And, if I remembered, I’d say that my job
was to teach best what I most needed

to learn—often nothing about writing
or putting out a newspaper or publishing

a literary journal, not how to write an essay
or a poem or make a photograph.

The best teaching, I learned, is often what
what we reteach ourselves—that we have

voices worthy of the page, even if we
imagine that we don’t. That our words

matter. That we are lovely beings,
coming just as we are to the world,

to the table, to sit with each other
and listen, as someone reads,

and we watch them flourish
from within, giving us the great gift

of themselves, which now becomes
part of ourselves, a sweet blessing

as we hold their words gently,
listening to each other as we

bloom and bloom again.