(Poem to Honor Those Who Teach Creativity)

          - Philomene Long

The same flower
blooms and blooms again, forever.

          --John Thomas

To create
One must become
The mind of a seed
Deep within the mud
Rupturing
Roots, jagged, clutching
In the dark
Stem rising
Rising through the
Silence
Puncturing the earth
Lost, stretching, swaying
In no direction
In all directions
The tiny bud hidden
Finally
Shattering
The sky
Blooming
Golden forever
On fire
As within the paint of
Van Gogh's field of
Sunflowers

To teach
Creativity
One must become
The gaze of
Emily Dickinson
Upon the kernel of
Another's mind
"The Brain is
Wider than the sky"
She says
"The Brain is just the
Weight of God"
She says

To teach
Creativity
Is to be
All nine Greek Muses and
Sappho falling in love
Again and again
It is to become the complexity
Of the whole of humanity in
William Shakespeare's
Comedies and Tragedies

To teach
Creativity
Is to become
The other's
Seed falling
From that
Same flower
Into the
Dank, dark
Ground
And to listen
For sounds
The deaf
Beethoven
Could hear

It is to hear
The harmony
Mozart learned
Three months before
His dying
A musical inversion
Ascending, descending
Simultaneously
Life, Death
One thing
As within his
Mortis examine
(The "test of death")
In his Ave Verum Corpus
(The "Hail True Body")

To teach
Creativity
One must touch
Within that seed
The First Design
The Original Landscape
The Architecture of the Mind

It is to be
Socrates asking
Again and again
The same question
The only question
"Who are you?"
It is the student
Answering
The only answer
"I AM"

It is
Jack Kerouac's
Golden Eternity Blossoming

It is the
Becoming

Creation
Becoming
Creator
The Universe
Becoming
Aware of itself
On fire
The same flower
Blooming and blooming
Again, forever

It is the
Flower Sermon

It is the Teacher
Who holds up that Flower

And although those
Most honorable
Seek no honor
Nevertheless

We honor them

© 2004 - Philomene Long Thomas

Written and performed for the UCLA Extension Department
of the Arts Outstanding Teachers Awards, December 7, 2004.