for a Special-Ed teacher
From the heap of autumn-fall, take one leaf
and then another. Hold them up to light.
This one, unspeaking, is a mother’s grief.
Or joy. A single deep-veined leaf takes flight
from your hand. It rises, aloft it stays
among the leaves all sweeping down in swirls.
You stand there in a speechless wind-drift haze
that changes into SpecEd boys and girls –
no, tree-leaves dancing in a classroom breeze
like children for a dreaming instant lost
to pedagogy’s logic, if you please –
and look, you’re dancing, every T uncrossed.
If these are children of a leaf-fall chance,
what can a teacher do with them but dance?
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