A Memoir Excerpt

One project I've been working on for awhile is a memoir put together as poetry vignettes. Most of us are not famous, but we all have a story to tell. Each of our lives is a different tale in the myriad stories of the lives lived by each and every individual from the beginning of the world's scheme. This is one poem from that memoir.

           Four Room School House

In the mid-sixties, before Socorro consolidated it schools,
I attended the four room, gray school house in Lemitar, NM.

With teachers like Mrs. Otero with her matronly hugs—later
I would drive her poor husband crazy in high school—karma
that has definitely been returned to me over my over twenty years
as a teacher myself—

Mr. Luna and Mr. Saiz with their wisdom.
The lunchroom ladies with delightful, nutritious, “home cooked”
meals. I ran through the whole series of the “I Was There” or was it
“You were there” books that were written from the point of view
Of someone involved in a particular important event like traveling with
Louis and Clark or being involved in the Manhattan Project.

This is where I was when Mr. Luna sent us home after word was released
that president Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. I remember walking home
by myself, uneasy—reacting to the event that for many of us Boomers
first made us realize the fragility of our world.