From time to time, I reach into my mind and bring out the lines – sometimes many lines – of poems that I memorized during my Junior High years at Peckham Junior School in Milwaukee. I’ve written that I lived – literally – on the other side of the tracks, and I walked the mile or so every day with other kids from my neighborhood.
As I walked that mile, I left one world and entered another – I entered the world that would enlarge my world view even more than the excellent teachers who had been mine in Elementary School. School teachers in that time – the early 1960’s – all seemed to wear, every single day, a navy blue dress with white polka dots, the hem long, almost to the tops of their black, low heeled shoes. At least that’s how Miss Ross dressed.
For three years, Miss Ross was my English teacher. And the great gift she gave me remains with me to this day. Every week, we were assigned a poem to memorize. The poets were American poets, of the old school, poets who wrote in rhyme – iambic pentameter, I learned – educated people of the last century or the early years of my century.
Every Friday, Miss Ross called one of us to the front of the room to recite the poem we’d been assigned to memorize. One by one over the course of a semester, a student, shy and afraid, calm and sure, bumbling or not, walked to the front of the class and spoke the words of a beautiful poem aloud.
Quiet and a bit shy, I did not tremble or even fear that I might be called. I had an inner assurance that stayed with me as I walked to the front of the class, stood in front of the row of seats close to the window, and recited aloud the poem I’d learned by heart.
Now, I hold onto the gift that Miss Ross gave us all. I can be with a small group of friends and begin to recite aloud the rhyming lines of a poet from another time. As I recite aloud, my friends are silent, listening. We all know something beautiful is being offered to us all in that moment – to me, enjoying again the rhythm, the carefully chosen words, the image that comes to mind as those words are repeated aloud, to my listener, who knows they are receiving something grand, something well-crafted.
During the holiday times, between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, I make sure to recite for some small audience “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas,” a poem I memorized after I’d moved on from Miss Ross and into High School. The joy she’d brought me by making an assignment I was sure to complete is mine, to this day. And the joy belongs to others, to those who listen.
One Christmas Eve, as we ended the candlelight service of carols and the reading of scriptures that told the ancient story, once again, of the Holy coming into the world, I closed the service to the rhythmic stanzas of “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” (Robert Frost). The gathered worshippers listened as we held our candles high above our heads, silent, listening. We have no snow here in the Bay Area, but the words, the sentiment, were silent and deep, too, as the poet writes:
“the woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep…”
“I will be the gladdest thing under the sun. I will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one.” – Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Afternoon on a Hill,” photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 4/24
