February 24 Sheffer Crossword Puzzle Poem Draft

We pass samples of divinity and swirled fudge with demi-
tasse spoons beside the beach - to pay the rent our biz.
Where the sea exhibit used to be an Asian woman sews.
We like it here where salty sand and sun are our providers.
We've found what we believe and stay in sync and link
to what we love. Like sand dollars, we haven't any
need for what's away from shore. Sip your orange
drink honey, we're listening to Haydn.
Do you think you smite us with ahem?
Go sit beneath the shade, rub in your aloe.
You're in the shallows and there's nothing else to say


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What I'm wondering this morning is if more parents have sent their children to private schools over the past 15 years or if children have as it were lost their fricking minds over this time? Sadly I think that lots of kids are on the brink of having lost the ability to think or do anything interior at all without someone riding them - I'm talking about middle schoolers who I've always felt would be happier and more productive on twelve hour a day wilderness work crews than in school. Can you believe I've written that someone can ride a child into experiencing an inner life? That won't work! But what it will do is quiet the exterior, separate the ants from one another, stop the constant outer whoosh outer babble outer give and take and take and take that dominates their daily lives. Or not. Where I am teaching now it's a delight to walk around the room and talk to kids from all over the world, this generation, this kid, from somewhere hundreds to thousands of miles away. This is part of the problem. How to reach kids whose grasp of the English language is tentative - and many who've had little education in that far off place so that even if our language were the same they'd be behind. And how is it tjat some teachers blow off classroom management entirely in a room where people need to know how big the playpen is? And where it isn't? A kid yesterday who'd been suspended for weeks came back - I remembered him from last year when he'd been in school a day or two at a time between suspensions. He did well in that other idyllic now I see classroom where the teacher sat beside him. Yesterday he left the room several times - SEVERAL TIMES - and the teacher at her computer didn't notice. Her one disciplinary gesture was to deny him a writing implement. "Didn't you prepare for school?" or "Why is it you didn't prepare to be in class?" OBVIOUSLY the kid has a knack for chaos - give him a pen, and don't let him leave the room!