Buck Up: How Many Will It Take?

So close to the end of the school year. my mind is full of images of my colleagues through the last 9 months. Our conversations in the hallways when we tried to figure out how to deal with the latest demand. Tears when we saw our dreams for kids dissolving when the tests and teaching to the test wasn't relevant or meaningful. A kind of painful laughter when the program became too crazy to even talk about anymore.

With a summer break in the routine and a new school year ahead to start fresh, we are talking about how we can work together to find positive pathways through the increasingly standardized policies and mandates. There is a lot of talk around me of small groups to support and learn together and find ways to reach the kids in our particular schools while under external one size-for-all control.

I hope we can keep ourselves healthy in our lives to keep on going.  Summertime is a chance for us to breathe different air and see with different perspectives.

I'm grateful to Marge Piercey for writing this poem that I go back to all the time when I need to buck up. I hope its okay with her that I share her poem here--I think poetry is meant to be shared, right?

The Low Road

by Marge Piercy

What can they do

to you? Whatever they want.

They can set you up, they can

bust you, they can break

your fingers, they can

burn your brain with electricity,

blur you with drugs till you

can't walk, can't remember, they can

take your child, wall up

your lover. They can do anything

you can't stop them

from doing. How can you stop

them? Alone, you can fight,

you can refuse, you can

take what revenge you can

but they roll over you.

But two people fighting

back to back can cut through

a mob, a snake-dancing file

can break a cordon, an army

can meet an army.

Two people can keep each other

sane, can give support, conviction

love, massage, hope, sex.

Three people are a delegation,

a committee, a wedge. With four

you can play bridge and start

an organization. With six

you can rent a whole house,

eat pie for dinner with no

seconds, and hold a fund raising party.

A dozen make a demonstration.

A hundred fill a hall.

A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter;

ten thousand, power and your own media;

ten million, your own country.

It goes on one at a time,

it starts when you care

to act, it starts when you do

it again after they said no,

it starts when you say 'We'

and know who you mean, and each

day you mean one more.

(from The Moon is Always Female 1996)