This Teacher Inspires Me Poem by priscah Mutswenje

Yesterday I sat at home cooking
Aunt pulls the blanket snoring
At 4 she knows I am working
Digging trenches and making a furrow
Like a dream my world was narrow
And my future faint full shallow
This teacher inspires me to keep learning

Yesterday I stood for hours humming
A tune after another as if I was praying
Aunt roughly rushed in shouting
Names unspeakable to a young heart
Like an orphaned calf I surrendered in guilt
This teacher inspires me to keep learning

Was I such a messy girl to keep mourning
Was my destiny deep in bare begging
God must have been unfair to dump me in suffering
I hope that a savior hears my voice
Wishing it was no longer nude noise
This teacher inspires me to keep learning

The world was wild to keep squeezing
me in illiteracy. Slavery so suffocating
I longed for a moment with a person called loving
In my dreams I felt a fatherly hand
On waking I fell in tenders hands of a band
Of a concerned, knowledgeable friend
This teacher inspires me to keep learning

Today I flew into a fences compound
I her hands I felt safe, peace-bound
Helter-skelter I played with friends newly found
Songs and letters I sing and read
Groups in class I join and lead
In me, she plants an intelligence seed
This teacher inspires me to keep learning

She is a creative informative channel
From whose wisdom I fill my empty funnel
Patient but strict she covers the ignorance tunnel
Turnin a mere maid into a doctor
Such love and interest if a mother
She shows even when I am a bother
This teacher inspires me to keep learning

With tasks, guidance and correction
She keeps giving me direction
Of do's and don'ts in education
A mentor she plays, an advisor she is
Current and future discipline she instills
This teacher inspires me to keep learning

Thanks teacher I will achieve my dream
You came in and problems went trim
The future of a maid is no longer slim
You turned me into a scholar
With no vision that's shorter
I am no longer that colder
You shaped my great future