Wild Iris

 “Some of us make our own light: a silver leaf like a path no one can use.” Louise Gluck, “The Wild Iris”

Wild irises are beautiful and colorful but don’t last long and are endangered due to dwindling habitat and a decline in bumblebees, their pollinator. Usually I don’t read the New York Times Sunday magazine poems, but “Wednesday Poem” by Joel Dias-Porter caught my eye and caused me to shed tears for all the young lives snuffed out too soon, not only in inner cities such as Gary and East Chicago, where Dave has too often mourned the loss of former students, but just the other day in Valparaiso, where 19-year-old former Valpo High School football star Noah Beller was shot in the chest following an argument over a paternity test.

Wednesday Poem

By Joel Dias-Porter

I pass through the metal detector,

inside the front doors of Cardozo High,

with xeroxed poems and a lesson planned

to introduce my students to the wild iris.

After signing my name in the visitors’ log,

I bop down to flights of steps.

Outside the classroom things are too quiet

and Mr. Bruno

(who’s Puerto Rican and writes poetry)

takes ten minutes to answer the door.

There’s a student snapshot in his hand.

One of our kids got shot last night,

Remember Maurice? Maurice Caldwell.

He didn’t come to school much.

A Crisis Response Team has the kids in a circle,

and I’ve never seen them sit so quietly.

Every computer in the classroom is dead.

A drawing of Maurice is taped to the board,

a bouquet of cards pinned under it,

Keisha (who writes funny poems in class)

says Maurice would help her with math,

she liked him but never told him.

The Crisis lady says It’s OK to cry.

Keisha says she been ran out of tears.

Mr. Bruno tells me Somebody called him

from a parked Buick on Thomas Place NW.

When he walked up, they fired three times.

I freeze. That’s a half block from my house.

There are four crackhouses on that block

and I never walk down that street.

I wonder why he approached the car,

was he hustling crack or weed?

Or did he recognize the dude and smile

before surprise blossomed across his face

and the truth rooted into his flesh.

His face flashes before my irises,

I see him horseplaying with Haneef,

his hair slicked back into a ponytail.

He wrote one poem this whole semester,

a battle rap between cartoon characters.

Mr. Bruno asks if I still want to teach.

I open my folder of nature poems,

then close the folder and slump in a chair.

What simile can seal a bullet wound?

Which student could these pistils protect,

here where it’s natural to never see seventeen?

“Wednesday Poem” reminded me of former Gary teacher John Sheehan’s “Gary Postscript, 1989, which begins:

The schools I taught in were noisy but friendly

the jiving was mostly merriment

the gangs mostly clubs

the learning more than you’d think

though six of my students were shot to death

out of six thousand