'Trust the Process'

As a basketball fan--and now having put that orange orb into the bucket in my 6th decade (Vince Carter, btw, is now in his 5th decade and contributing to a noteworthy Memphis Grizzlies team)--I want to extend the hitherto hapless hopes of the Philadelphia 76ers, who have painstakingly 'trusted the process' of rebuilding a team from nothing to something, Joel Embiid the poster-man of their cause. It is a story worth a look, as he grew up inspired by Hakeem Olajuwan, old Nigeria drawing young Cameroon in, and we are a better planet for these two and all they represent.

The stories of our makings are necessary to tell, and sometimes we do so easily, and sometimes we do them well. I had some idea of why I became a teacher--my mother's precedent was ever-present, as was Grandpa George and mentors at Lincoln Junior High and Maine South, especially Dee Johnson in 11th grade. I've been sustained in this profession through countless others and workshops (even in Amsterdam, June 2016) to fortify the words of Joe Vold a week before he died: "Dan, be a teacher."

It is good to hearken back, and--through the internet--to project forward. Emma and I have seen about 8 episodes of Room 222 in the past few weeks, partly because I knew my 222nd poem on Lost Menagerie would be nigh. I had no idea how much that show honed who I was; at the risk of some soft blasphemy, I think the Holy Spirit worked then and now in showing how "all things work together for good to them who love God" (Romans 8:28) toward guiding me to teach--and, as all Mr Dixons know, to learn along the way.

Thus, my 222nd poem of late, a shell of what was and can be, a room for discussion and sanctity:

                  Room 222

We’ll do well to work toward

Virginia Woolf’s challenge: create

a new respect for the right we’re

priviledged to, that everybody has

a room of one’s own. Countless

I’ve had, and wait for only one as

foretold in the gospel of John: a cell

more capacious than Prospero’s,

Schwann’s, Edgar A. Poe’s, a home

for the house-less, as King Lear

now knows. Therefore I compose.

In Glyndon, I grew in the glow of

good light—literal amber waves of

grain; the times perhaps were a

scrapbook of Dickens in what was

played out (and Pip, in the end, is

worth dreaming about). My brothers

and I strayed outside quite a lot,

sometimes next door to tabulate

turtles that slid to the floor of the

bathtub interred in the garden soil,

wondering if they’d ever to back.

On Fridays, after supper and in

reflection of Mr Roger’s world,

we’d sing our bedtime ritual, then

try to squeeze a little more from

ABC—not quite the Brady Bunch or

news relayed by Harry Reasoner;

in rooms imagined by technology,

I cut my teeth to be a teacher by

thinking through Pete Dixon, who

rhymed (by chance) with Nixon,

and worlds beyond a make-believe.

Where are those friendly ghosts

from childhood?— the crank who

principalled the crew, the counselor

who scanned kids well if not to read

into, the goofy student teacher who

travelled to Turkmenistan, where I

was goofy, too, the Ritchies, Helens,

Jasons of the class, and all they

plied to make their efforts bloom,

streaming well before the internet,

a prescient point for modern rooms.