From Cathleen – On being a teaching artist in the public schools and how it sometimes feels
“The Guardian Angel”
by Stephen Dunn (American poet, 1939- )
Afloat between lives and stale truths,
he realizes
he’s never truly protected one soul,
they all die anyway, and what good
is solace,
solace is cheap. The signs are clear:
the drooping wings, the shameless thinking
about utility
and self. It’s time to stop.
The guardian angel lives for a month
with other angels,
sings the angelic songs, is reminded
that he doesn’t have a human choice.
The angel of love
lies down with him, and loving
restores him his pure heart.
Yet how hard it is
to descend into sadness once more.
When the poor are evicted, he stands
between them
and the bank, but the bank sees nothing
in its way. When the meek are overpowered
he’s there, the thin air
through which they fall. Without effect
he keeps getting in the way of insults.
He keeps wrapping
his wings around those in the cold.
Even his lamentations are unheard,
though now,
in for the long haul, trying to live
beyond despair, he believes, he needs
to believe
everything he does takes root, hums
beneath the surfaces of the world.
Touchstone Backstage 
yes…..20 years teaching English and drama in a troubled public school…sometimes violent and cruel…..Viola Spolin …improvisation….theater games….rewritten Israel Horowitz ,remove the obscenity…….Ellen Stewart and Peter Brooks and Eric Morris…read ’em all and bring them to class then send them out to……..30 years later….they’re on my face book page….they remember and it mattered….you just can’t know how those small moments with you will take root and matter, matter matter…………….
SPARK
I always resented all the years, the hours, the
minutes I gave them as a working stiff, it
actually hurt my head, my insides, it made me
dizzy and a bit crazy — I couldn’t understand the
murdering of my years
yet my fellow workers gave no signs of
agony, many of them even seemed satisfied, and
seeing them that way drove me almost as crazy as
the dull and senseless work.
the workers submitted.
the work pounded them to nothingness, they were
scooped-out and thrown away.
I resented each minute, every minute as it was
mutilated
and nothing relieved the monotonous ever-
structure.
I considered suicide.
I drank away my few leisure hours.
I worked for decades.
I lived with the worst of women, they killed what
the job failed to kill.
I knew that I was dying.
something in me said, go ahead, die, sleep, become
them, accept.
then something else in me said, no, save the tiniest
bit.
it needn’t be much, just a spark.
a spark can set a whole forest on
fire.
just a spark.
save it.
I think I did.
I’m glad I did.
what a lucky god damned
thing.
— Charles Bukowski