I can see how my father,
On the night he died,
Walked the floors,
Waiting for it to subside,
This uneasiness,
This indigestion,
This aging body that won’t let you sleep,
I feel it now as I tell myself
Never to eat before going to bed,
As I turn once again
To the lone cricket sadly singing outside my window,
And tell him
It’s a cool Fall night,
To hush and go to sleep.
cfblack 9/20/2020
Sitting on my screened-in porch
A wasp tries to make it in
Over and over again.
I don’t blame him,
I also hear
the guns of Fort Jackson in the distance,
Shooting practice,
Preparing for war,
How do we prepare for peace?
The cicadas are oblivious,
Sing their song with rising crescendo,
Then fall away, then come again,
They sing us through the chaos,
Tell the anthurium to bloom.
cfblack 07-14-2020
There will be no race war.
We will stand strong.
You will not pull us apart at the seams.
There will be no race war.
We are one people.
As a nation we will support unity.
There will be no race war.
My family is color,
And so is yours, if you look close enough.
There will be no race war.
Love is stronger than hate.
I will not fall into the abyss of name calling.
There will be no race war
when we stand together,
when we reject your crude and hateful stance.
We are a nation of immigrants,
a nation of colors,
each one a flower of humanity.
Don’t tell me I’m wrong,
my brother, my sister,
my father and mother, my neighbor, my friend.
Your insecurity betrays you,
Your insanity is evident,
There will be no race war
because we are one.
Shall I kill my brother?
Shall I hate my own sister?
There will be no race war
because we are one.
cfblack, 06-29-2020
One of the standard requirements, now,
is a teaching philosophy,
to prove your worth as a teacher,
— with stories of how you inspire
critical thinking in the classroom, through
engaging conversation,
applying sociological thought
to the world that students live in.
Do they mean the world of twitter,
— instagram, or snapchat?
the world of Facebook Messenger,
— the culture of Zoom?
Engagement means to understand
we live in a brave new world,
o fast-paced interaction
of 5-minute blips of TV news,
where knowledge is at their fingertips
so what can I possibly say,
while standing right in front of them
50 minutes a day?
Engagement is to forget everything
they ever learned in school,
what will be on the test tomorrow,
whose assignment they can borrow.
It is very hard to analyze
the world we live in, as we live it,
but that is our task, to see
the end in the beginning,
to challenge all around us,
and the way we are told to be,
to imagine, to ask why that is,
that is my teaching philosophy,
to have them think creatively,
to never accept what we do,
to ask why we do it,
and to build their world anew.
cfblack, 05-13-2020
I work all morning
print my excel gradebook
onto actual pages,
which then are stapled
into the required
paper gradebook
due today.
And I wonder
who might return 5 years from now
to challenge a grade,
when my college online grading program
AND Microseoft Excel
may be out-of-date technology
and impossible to read.
cfblack, 05-11-2020
Yesterday, I awoke at 7,
read papers till 2am,
driven by coffee and adrenalin,
and the prospect of the end,
and I know, a lot of it is me,
I refuse to accept mediocrity,
I want them all to do their best,
so I take the time to judge,
Did they learn to write with clarity?
did they take it to the end,
did they write their project logically?
is it something to defend?
I know not what a difference it makes,
or whether or not they care,
what matters is being true to yourself,
when no one else is there,
And yet, my work is killing me,
my energy is less,
“To every thing there is a season”*
and a change is for the best,
There will be a new direction,
as I learn to take a breath,
and “a time for every purpose
under heaven”.*
cfblack, 04-30-2020
*Ecclesiastes 3:1
I teach 6 classes,
6 different preps,
at a school where most
struggle through a semester,
coming to class, and interacting.
in a call and response sort of way,
laughing with friends,
and carrying on,
— challenging me
as I question them.
Their ghosts now walk the empty halls,
where they stand, leaning into each other,
away from home, enjoying their freedom,
friends helping one another.
We now interact
in a virtual world,
where classes are held on screen,
They send assignments by email and phone,
while keeping the virus away.
This virus is a menacing thing,
and people need each other,
We do our best to make it through,
while wanting to be together,
I asked them what they learn from this
that they wouldn’t know otherwise,
they said, “Be prepared, and wash your hands,
and never take LIFE for granted”.
cfblack, 04-16-2020
Doctor Grandma 