A KIND OF BEAUTY

Three teachers walked into a bar … that was a bit careless! 
Women born in the Years of the Tiger and the Cat, 
Welcome in the flesh, and in the memories that float 
Like ocean pools alive with people we will never forget:
Fluid as the bright blue sea; full as a cup of kindness.

Forty-seven, or forty-eight now. The past 30 years 
Gone as fast as that last scrawled page was turned 
at the end of our final exam; 
history fading like the bell that fell to 
silence, along corridors of an age we had 
outgrown. Bags packed, heels turned 
to face the gates to a world that treated us 
not as presidents, or as queens, 
but as people finding our way – 
flags set to sail a thousand oceans, or none, 
to seek our fellows, to find our place, to know ourselves.

The sun has progressed a sign since we signed 
school blazers and uniforms and
drifted towards destinies that lay beyond 
our limitations, graduations and expectations. 
We knew it all, and nothing. 
We had it all, and nothing.

And the lessons didn’t end when that last trace of ink was wiped from the board. 
For our teachers had blown into our lives like dandelion seeds, 
planting what we really needed to know. 
Not in the notes we jotted in books, or the marginalia of ponderance, 
but while we were taking in Austen and calculus, titration and the Tierce de Picardie, 
inscribing a tripartite formula into the fibres of our hearts –
that each of us mattered, that we had potential, and that we were necessary: 
for one another and for the world. 

Three teachers walked into a bar –
Faith, hope and love – 
And coached us to find all we longed to learn, 
all we yearned to know, 
and all we burned to understand. 
And, as Sister Mary would say, if you’re very quiet …

– Rita Glennon (On our 30th high school reunion)