Sap

Digging through a box of old files, I found this poem I wrote during my first year of teaching. Despite the obvious ripping off of John K. Samson, I still like it. Revisions made today are in italics.

Let's fold up our bad days and shove them in the backs of textbooks,
Hide our fears in the bottoms of lockers, and throw anxiety away in the blue bin by the door.
Let's embrace "how are you's" and recognize how much we really mean them.
Let's hold hands with tomorrow, and let's realize how cheesy that last line was.

Let's forget the things we find in textbooks:
Forget the theorems and Pythagoras,
Forget the scraps of paper,
Forget the meaning of this poem.
Let's forget everything we know except that we know each other.
Let's learn instead that there's so much to learn and that we should be students for the rest of our lives.
Let's be students for the rest of our lives.
Let's learn from each other.
Better yet, let's learn that we've been learning from each other all along.

Let's realize that every breath we breathe ins the most important