absent magazine

(McNeill Building, Room 286-7, University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Heidi Gross’ lecture on Literacy and Professional Development for Teachers, 4/26/07, 5:56 p.m.)

The gorgeous trees outside the classroom
The landscape of trees
That are
The great backdrop to the voices within the classroom
Words are very poor reminders
For what we are feeling at this time
At this time of grief
The black trees that have green leaves
Outside the classroom contrast brightly
Against the red brick, the white sky
In the psychology department
Women sound soft, their voices do
Like movies in Hollywood, but old Hollywood
Not the Hollywood of today, the old world
The women’s voices speak of things we all could attest
Like behavior, feeling, heart
The women speak of hearts, not reading
Vygotsky thought the hearts were more important
Than voices, and then voices
More important than sentences
Sentences are more important than anything, I say
Trees, trees are important
More important than anything
More important than anything
I am a tree
So strong and tall, I long
To bust myself within the classroom
The young flowers are women in their kindness
The soft voices of motherhood
I am no mother, nor father, I am a tree
Some tree, like a silver burst that burst within the sky
Once I rose into the sky, unbeknownst to anybody
That I had rose so gracefully and strong despite myself
Despite women who gave me my softness
That upon speaking, I shed like skin
A spirit skin, my soft voice
I left it like a skin
That had never quite fit me
A tree skin, some tree skin
Gorgeous tree skin, green and otherworldly and strange,
Very strange, green skin that feels so strange
It is a strange mandate upon the sky
Contrasting the sky though
That is the skin I wear