March 2021
Bio Note: As an educator, I have learned quite a bit during the past year of pandemic-induced
educational models. Many students have struggled, but not all. Many of us have also discovered something new
about ourselves as the quiet settled in, and have experienced the outdoors in new and sublime ways. I wrote
this poem last spring.
This Spring’s Yin
One of my social studies students does not speak
ever
in school he is not altogether
socially isolated
but sometimes associates
with the half-hearted slackers
he avoids eye contact
and projects an aura of academic apathy
but once social distancing began
with the shift to online learning
he turned in his assignments
well before anyone else
the lockdown has awakened me
to the yin of the universe
one Saturday I felt it drop down
onto the streets of Sheboygan
with the heft of my Nana
collapsing into the hollow
of her easy chair
this new quiet presses into every cool corner
and feels like the fever of photosynthesis
but its opposite
silence tingles and sparkles in my cells
as if matter transmuted into light
my mute student, like a door opening
©2021 Sylvia Cavanaugh
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