Take heart

Take heart---for better days are coming.

Sunny days with yellow song-filled mornings

And afternoons echoing distant happy shouts of children playing in the sun.

The evenings—ah—the evenings.

Cooled down from heat of day,

when silver sparks of fireflies make meadows look like nighttime skies.

The memories stir my heart.

Heat up the icy landscape outside my window.

I wrote this poem many years ago. I used to love writing poetry. This afternoon I was going through my photo albums looking for an old picture of me with my Easter bonnet and basket but I couldn’t find the album that it was in. That lead me to going through all my photo albums and taking a trip down memory lane. I had one album that I had made when I took a graduate class a long time ago. (I have my Master’s degree plus 42 credits) I had made it when I taught the gifted program in our school district. That part of my career was the most satisfying I ever experienced. I was allowed to write my own curriculum and had an almost unlimited budget for materials. It was a dream job. I had small classes of the brightest kids in the schools and total control of what I wanted to teach and how I wanted to teach it with no restrictions. I taught architecture, Medieval times, Pioneer and Space simulation games, hydroponics, art history and much more using an abundance of creativity. The children and parents loved it as well as I did. Today I came across this album that I had made and sat down to read it. Included in the album were the newsletters that I had sent out to the parents and administration chronicling our activities. As I read it brought back all the memories of the things that we had done and the fun we had learning. I was so fortunate to be able to do that for nine years. The best part of the album was the letters that the students wrote about their classes and about their teacher. I cherish each one of them and it makes me proud that I was a teacher. 

Here is another poem that I found:

Santa, are ya out there tonight?

Permed haired girls with porcelain skin wait in their $150,000 houses for dawn to prance before the fireplaces opening multitudes of gifts. “Thank you, mammy and daddy.”

   Spiked haired boys sneak out of their football printed sheets, put on their Nike sneakers, and open their Nintendos and Ataris and Apples.

Moms glow with gold, dads smile at electric screwdrivers.

Across the world a nation of children just wake up

swatting flies off their swollen bellies.

Santa, are ya out there tonight?