Brussels, Belgium.
This morning as my seventh graders filed into my lab for their science class, they were confronted with the tail end of my last class……a slurry of bits of paper, each with a word on it spread haphazardly on the floor. We were classifying words…science vocabulary….let your mind wander a bit to visualize! Eva, on her entrance, quickly shouted to the seventh graders behind her, ‘don’t walk on his words!’.
This phrase caught my ear and immediately I thought that it was the beginning of a poem that needed to be written. By the end of the day, I came up with the words you find below. Eva is a harpist and I am going to challenge her to write a piece to on her harp to accompany it. Then I thought of Paul. He would ‘get’ this.
Don’t walk on my words
They sprawl on the floor
They carry my thoughts
My long-held mantras
You can build a bridge
To get over them
But they will continue
To whisper
Or even bellow
From under your feet
Tempting you to take heed.
Jump in and
Swim through my words
Let them
Permeate your being
Penetrate your mind
Don’t walk on my words
Rather, walk through them
Amble among their meanings
And take hold of
My thoughts.
thetomryan 
I LOVE this poem!! Eva is fabulous- I can hear her saying that now, and with such heart felt conviction. We might have to do a little poetry next week in social studies… : )
I wish I could split myself into several different teachers….I am teaching Science but I really miss teaching Language Arts…….poetry is one of my favourites! Thanks, Sara, for reading this……I appreciate ‘feed forward’ on anything!!!