Mr. Teacher Poem by Frank Avon

What I spoke as truth
was what I had imagined,
made up, pretended -
convinced that my pretense
was utter Reality, outer

reality. And they listened.
My God, they listened
(or else transferred out) :
Sondra, Lindy, Ann,
John, Errol, Sam....
I had never been listened to
before. They listened
to what I made up, or
evoked from what I skimmed,
scanned, perused, browsed:

what Douglas Bush meant
or John Locke or Cardinal Newman,
heaven's bourne in 'La Belle Dame, '
Whitman's astronomer and
Geo. Meredith's galaxies,
how Eben Flood was already
ebbing, what Christmas meant
to Nemerov or Laurence Ferlinghetti,
'Christ climbed down...this year, '
Old (St.) Nick gone by Easter....

I told them what it all meant,
and, by God, they listened -

and found their selves therein,
I think, as I was finding mine.
That's what education is, isn't it?
Listening to what someone made up,
and learning, by the way,
how to make things up oneself.

Literacy is illiteracy disguised,
a tale told by idiots -
signifying what is signified,
and we become who we become
by deciding which pretense is real,
and which merely pretentious.
That's what teachers are meant to be
- until they go away for their Ph.D.

and disappear.