"Education"

 

I am a septuagenarian 

who has almost succeeded

in erasing my "education,"

but I am still grateful to Miss Buckles

for teaching me to diagram sentences,

which I loved as a kind of

esoteric tantra for poets.

And thank you, Mr. Heath,

for telling us to read

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

not because we had to

but because it was beautiful.

Whoever the professor was

who made me memorize the prelude

to Canterbury Tales in Middle English

bur never tested me on it,

I can't remember your name,

yet I remember Chaucer and still

recite those lines in April

by heart. 

I only recall the things I wasn't graded on.

No one assigned e.e. cummings.

How could you be graded on 

the mud-luscious goat-footed balloonMan?

Those poems just fell off the shelf

into my hand

in a dusty used book store.

So did the Tao Te Ching.

And that's what changed my life

when I was thirteen,  

not my "education."

Nobody taught Basho or Issa

or Coney Island of the Mind

except Mr. Payne the art teacher

who read them to us while we painted,

then got fired for being gay.

"Christ climbed down from his bare tree

and ran away to where there were

no plastic Christmas trees."

That knocked me out.

So I traveled from Philly to San Francisco

seeking Ferlinghetti at the

City Lights Bookstore.

But it wasn't a school trip, my dad took me.

Thank you, dad. I love you.

Then I read a book that

ignited an explosion of virescent fire

in the center of my chest,

The Way of Zen by Alan Watts.

But it wasn't homework, it was play.

Paul Desmond and Dave Brubeck

clabbered my heartbeat into song

so I started sax lessons.

I called up John Coltrane on the telephone.

I didn't tell him I was thirteen.

Using my deepest voice I said,

"Hey man, I play sax too and I 

just wanted to say, you are truly Great."

He answered, "Thank you, man."

Epiphany beyond the classroom.

Don't get me wrong, I am grateful

for algebra, for calculus, for dissecting 

dead frogs in first year Biology.

I'm sure these skills are useful to someone

though I never used them.

I do remember getting out of class

for "Field Day"

when they divided us into two opposing legions,

the Greens and the Whites (school colors)

and made us compete all afternoon

for no reason anybody ever explained.

This too was "education."

It must have worked because

we've been trying to defeat each other ever since.

Now I am old.

I am finally stupid again.

Just about back to where I was at the end

of seventh grade, 

which was the beginning for me:

Coltrane, Basho, e.e., Lao T'zu.

Now I'm getting really clear, remembering

the sacrament of Ritz Crackers

and Peter Pan Peanut Butter,

tang of Coke on a summer afternoon,

Raisinettes. 

I learned about White Buffalo Woman

and the planetary rituals of Lakota Sioux

from watching Rin Tin Tin. 

I earned money hoisting hay bales 

into wagons until nine PM

to get them in a barn before the storm.

School doesn't teach the smell of rain, 

sweat, alfalfa, your own dollar bill.

Or that moment of satori 

making out at the drive-in

when I looked up and saw Rod Steiger 

chewing gum like gunfire at Sydney Poitier

in the Heat of the Night, 

and suddenly grokked the brilliant 

art of film-making.

God I loved it 

when I wasn't ashamed 

of saying something politically

incorrect, I wasn't trying 

to save us all from the apocalypse,

I wasn't serving "the movement"

or passing out protest flyers.

God I loved it 

when I could just leap up,

click my heals and be Hu

I already Am.
________________

You can listen to this poem here: LINK. 
Icon: St. John Coltrane Church, San Francisco