Liberal Forum

Cannonpointer » 01 Jun 2025, 6:42 pm » wrote: ↑

01 Jun 2025, 6:42 pm

I had a purple haied negress as a teacher in the 8th grade. This was LONG before such things were in fashion. Different era altogether. She was actually one of those very few teachers who "made a difference" for me. She was a magnificent person - a member of that 5%. 

Indeed, she inspired a poem I wrote:

She walks across the room – a splash of color;
Her improbable die job lends her sparkle; she lends it – somehow - dignity;
She walks as a giant: softly, purposefully, on her way to large commitments. 

She has seen the ugly, and seen the ugly,
And looked past the ugly to the beauty;
She oversteps excrement on her way to smell a rose.

Inhaling that perfume is not her large commitment –
But neither is it frivolity.
It is the discipline of those inhalations,

The doing of it and the doing of it
That makes her the worthy soldier;

The doing of it and the doing of it
That makes her the one who can