POETRY AND MORE
I’d like to mention at this point that in Dr. Sutton’s poetry class at Ball State University students were required to write a paper about our poetic experiences each week. I have no idea what other students in that class did for that assignment, but I chose my favorites from the pages of poetry assigned that week and discussed what they meant to me, and I composed some poetry of my own. For two days I tried to look at everything I saw on my way to and from Muncie, taking the back roads when I could and looking at the countryside with the eyes of a poet. I stopped many times to write down something that I thought could be the basis for a poem some day. One of the items was a broken windmill that was moving a little in the wind. I wrote the poem several years later. Beside the list Dr. Sutton had written, “What will you do with these?”
One of the items mentioned on the list was a huge dead ‘possum’ that someone had picked up and draped over a country stop sign. The temperature was in the high ninety degrees and few cars were air-conditioned. My Volkswagen needed all the windows cranked completely down and the sunroof wide open, but, after one trip, I learned to stop quite a distance ahead of that stop sign, roll up windows and close the sunroof against the awful stench. I wasted no time getting off that road onto the highway. If that was poetic as I suggested, I have yet to use it in anything.
The last item on the list was a huge fire at the northern edge of Greenfield. A construction company was burning trees they had bulldozed down and dragged beside and on top of a white bungalow which seemed to be being burned as it stood in good, usable condition. It was raining as I stopped to make a notation. The next week I submitted this poem, which he then asked me to read aloud to the class.
FIRE DANCE
The grove is gone!
Those stately oaks that marked the spot so many years
Are mowed as grass is mowed
And burn in two gigantic grass fires.
The grove is gone!
In time the water tower for which it bowed
Will stand as tall
And mark the spot another way.
The stumps are burning and the great oak logs.
The grove is gone, and gone each trace
That might have told one who has not, as I have,
Watched the pace of mighty ruin,
"This is the place where stood the grove."
The flames, like passionate, red-skinned women,
Leap and bend
And, in an elemental rite,
Send smoke signals to their rain god
Whose power will not concern the folks
Who build this tower for more dependable supply.
The dancers bow low,
And through the shimmering vapors of their heated passion,
The slowing passerby can see among the logs
A hulk of a house that once was there,
A restful haven beside a grove of trees.
The grove is gone now–and the dwelling.
A swelling of the flames quickens the tempo.
Pain of intense heat reaches the roadway.
"Move on!"
The honking, hurried motorists protest.
Their blatancy disturbs my meditations,
And as they speed toward destinations,
Their whirring tires splash road mud in my face.
The drumbeat of the wipers is a witness
To the ritual my mud-streaked windshield
Hides from view.
A single, singing tone of invited air,
Higher and higher,
Marks my return to the pace of the moving highway.
I dispel the drummers with my thumb upon a knob.
Awareness awakens!
Only there on that short stretch have droplets come,
A blessed benediction upon the barren plain–
Cooling rain.
The grove is gone!
* * *
I sometimes think school boards and administrators don’t realize what simple creatures we teachers often are. They may choose to deal with us in devious ways. In 1967 when our Tammy was born, I left Charlottesville–by then called Eastern Hancock after its consolidation with Wilkinson High School in the northeast corner of the county—for a job nearer Ball State University where Margaret and I would be completing our Masters degrees. The time seemed right for a change because Margaret, who was always reluctant to make big changes, had taken a pregnancy leave of absence for a year. And while Mr. Glenn, superintendent, was in Europe with Ball State University classmates, the board decided to fire him and set aside all plans for a new building. I immediately resigned my post to accept a position at Lapel High School, where Jeannine Terhune from Carthage was teaching vocal music. The job paid $1000 more per year, which was a large increase in 1967.
A few months later a member of the Eastern school board asked me what had most affected my decision to leave that place. I answered, “I believe the most significant factor was that no one asked me to stay.” I loved that place and its inhabitants. Mr. Ed Knarr, perhaps the fairest man of power I ever knew, had become principal. Mr. Orahood had moved to a middle school in the Greenfield-Central rural area (the “Central” part of the name came from Hancock Central, which had recently consolidated with Greenfield High), where he served with distinction until his retirement. The next principal, from the outside, was there for only one year. Ed was a biology teacher and coach who had called me for advice when he was offered the principal’s post while I was teaching at Lapel. We had been neighbors, and he thought my perspective as an insider/outsider would be valuable.
The school’s most valuable asset was that team of sisters, Victoria and Ethel Harlan, who had served long terms in the Wilkinson community prior to the bitter consolidation. They were firm, and Ethel often spoke for both of them. She had nearly convinced Ed that the only hope for an end to the nasty political nature of this consolidation was to bring in someone from the outside and definitely not to hire a man from one of the two schools. I felt, however, that an outsider would flounder and be cremated and useless before his first year was over. This would be our fourth principal in four years. Ed, I ventured, would know of all the enemies; his wife’s influential parents were natives—an enormous plus; and Ed was all backbone (and nose—behind his back he was known as “Nose Knarr.”) I once went into the first floor boys bathroom and discovered someone had created a caricature of Mr. Knarr’s head. Subsequently, student had added length to his nose until it went all the way around the room. He was short of stature but his skin was tough. He may have known it was there. I doubt that he ever knew I mixed matching paint after scenery work one night soon after and painted it out. Obviously, he took my adviceand accepted the job and proved me right. He was a dedicated fixture there for years until a heart attack took his life too soon, far too soon.
