Experience, The Best Teacher Poem by Emmanuel Odei Oduro

When I was a student,
Many a teacher preached a sermon.
A sermon of, surprisingly, same subject.
This tedious theme could be thus summarized:
‘ if I could my student life re-live,
Very differently would I behave'.

A discourse denoting a dirge
A communication connoting a caution
If not a counselling to student who have ears
Students who would not shed tears,
Because they have ears to hear
And wise enough to understand,
Words of wisdom, even few.

But why to us their sermon relate?
Why to us their stories declare?

It is because about our future they care.
Careful, concerned and committed teachers,
Eager their experience to share,
Aware of the facts, glaring,
Facts preserved in an axiom,
The often quoted and tested maxim,
That experience is the best teacher.

Experience is the best teacher,
To those without any experience,
The best teacher is experience shared.
Shared by fair and frank fellows,
Who When good opportunities
Came beggarly begging,
Refused to these opportunities utilise,
Reaping the result of their recklessness, fully
Learning first-hand from their folly,
That opportunity knocks but once,
And once unutilised is lost forever.

But shared experiences meticulously applied,
Will save one the superfluous suffering,
Subsequent from the silly slip-up,
Of turning deaf ears to sermons.
Signifying that total respect to advice,
Plays a crucial role in molding us,
And goes to lend credence
To the usually used saw, that
Experience is the best teacher.