Sunday Poetry XXIV -- NO MORE A TEACHER & John Keats' "THIS LIVING HAND"

It hit me this past week--for some reason with particular vigor while monitoring the cafeteria at lunch, of all things or places--how terribly I am going to miss being a teacher.  Not preparing lessons and "molding young minds" and grading papers, but being a part--and integral part--of the lives of children and teenagers.  If I'm any good at teaching, it's not because of my subject or my love for it, but because I know and love and "get" kids.  They are my kids, and this living hand, no matter how I try--successful or not--to extend my own to them, is rather theirs, whether they're aware or no, to me:

This living hand, now warm and capable

Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold

And in the icy silence of the tomb,

So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights

That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood

So in my veins red life might scream again,

And thou be conscience-calmed—see here it is—

I hold it toward you.

This is one of my very favorite Keats' poems, and so it is for its depth and how it keeps hidden down there its immense beauty and, despite the inelegance of the word, its personableness.  Maybe you'll "get" it right away.  Not me.  It took me several reads--I had to work at it--before it hit home.  Even now, I have to read it twice.