cthewind's Blog

Sometimes, when I’m supposed to be working, only poetry comes out. It happens with stunning regularity on exam days. Looking out at students I am so often overcome by love and awareness of their suffering. Through these multiple pandemics I have come to embrace writing poetry as a practice of compassion.

Exam Day I

I love your sighs, your yawns, your pleading to the heavens—

your reaching for wisdom in your water bottle and coffee cup;

throwing down pencil or pen, then bravely taking it up again.

I love your hand cramps and exercises,

your tentative smiles and furtive glances at the clock.

Who knew your knuckles needed cracking so many times in an hour

or that anxiety made you sneeze and cough.

You pour out your thoughts with word and furrowed brow,

you scratch your head and toss your hair to shake loose stray thoughts,

you doodle on scratch paper or the exam itself, pausing to picture the priorities of your mind’s eye.

The sounds of your pencils are building a world—

your erasing a sign that you think for yourself

And, in a less happy semester:

Exam Day II

We didn’t part on the best of terms

It was finals

You were stressed and

just wanted to be done

I love you,

Yet my patience was short that day, too.

Bend without breaking,

Love without losing

I wanted to be gentle yet firm

I saw mild rebellion

And smoldering resentment in your eyes

It almost made me doubt what we’ve had together.

This is a poem to remind me,

To remind you,

Of how we’ve loved and learned

Even when we didn’t want to,

How we’ve struggled and been confused and thought Eboo Patel could solve everything

It’s a story of community

And how we really do need each other