A Poem to My Class
By Shanti Berman, 8th grade student, delivered to the Shining Mountain Waldorf School community during the Rose Ceremony, June 10, 2022
He left
She came
They stayed.
The numbers are moving and moved and move
30 and 24
But it is not the same
They sing, they dance, they play, they learn,
She comes back
He leaves forever
The grass is green and the soft air smells of new beginnings
To feel is only to let go
Let it slip through your hand like
Grains of sand, like water, like a new silk that is wrapped around the shoulders of their past
It is slipping away, catch it before it falls.
The wind brings memories they say
Listening to a story
The feel of beeswax under his, her, their fingernails
And the way that white shirt will forever carry watercolor paint,
Stained with voices
The colors weave our past
Monsters and mermaids and magic are interlaced with our fingers
Every time you sew a stitch or carve a chip of wood
Your, their, her, his, fingers sing
But don’t let it slip through your hands
Not yet.
Close your eyes and feel the flower crown in your hair.
To be silent is to talk but they know that
To cry to laugh,
She is leaving, this time forever
He never left
Why do some things never change?
When they run, when they speak, when they cry
It sticks but it is running through my, your, their fingers
But to walk is to understand
Is to know that
The water, the sand, the silk,
Aren’t lost but traveling, and singing, and playing, and dancing, and learning, and laughing
And to move like numbers like 30 and 24
Is a new beginning
And the water is an ocean
You, they, her, him, me
We remembered.
