! ! The Teacher Poem by Michael Shepherd

I wish I’d known him better.
But our respect for him was such
that you only spoke to him
when you needed to.
In a way, that was to know him truly.

You wouldn’t notice him, passing him
in a crowd; and yet, two paces on,
and you’d feel you had just passed
someone who walked in their own space
and left space itself quite unaffected.

To meet him, in the corridor, say,
early in the morning, was - what? -
awesome, refreshing, vitalising:
there was a sense that overnight,
he’d dived into some deep ocean
of sheer bliss; and emerged
like a morning seashore,
washed with freshness,
full of deep thought,
and his eyes
full of an understanding kindness
which stayed with you all the day.

What was extraordinary – of the many
things about this gloriously ordinary man -
was that although no-one ever saw him
looking at his watch, he was always
in the right place, and at just the right time,
yet never in a hurry – almost as if
he had some satellite navigation system built in.
And he always looked so genuinely pleased to be
just where he was. I don't think his facial muscles
knew how to pretend..

And so this spread to all of us around him –
and of course, he never put this into words;
yet love surrounded him; and we just loved
to work with him. Though there were some, new to him,
who could barely handle such goodness
when they met it – wanted to challenge it,
find some reason to pick holes
in such perfection, although it was
unboasted. But these, he seemed
to know instinctively, and why they were
just as they were; one day, he and they
would be involved in some unusual and difficult situation –
even on occasion, dangerous -
and they’d be friends with him for life.

It was said by those who had known him well in earlier years
that extraordinary and miraculous things
happened to him – visions, angels, future things revealed,
revelations of some law beyond all laws;
we never talked of this; the story was
that when one older friend had questioned him of this,
he’d said, he always knew it would in time
be what he needed to pass on to others.
And there the matter rested.

I’d say, for me, for life
he redefined the nature of true love.



for S.S.