by David Mullen

Created on: June 13, 2008

Ajar

My daughter, home from school with a fever, said to me,
"Daddy, oh, Daddy, call the teacher, you must call her!"
"Why?", I said.
"Because she always leaves the door open a little while after the bell rings for any child that might be a little late or too far out on the playground."

At this a tear came to my eye and I found around me the school yards of years under skies steel gray and clear and always on these grounds we gathered together or walked alone; children moving as streams in flows and eddies, cataracts and still pools.

In clots playing games or rising in challenges and counters to contests and fights bruising and bloody, or mocking in petty thoughtless cruelties. Becoming bigger as we grew and smaller as the world grew in harsh indifference to our little cares and tiny lives.

But always some stray not far from the school door and the comfort of proper grammar, the regular rule, multiplication tables, and the security of homework turned in, and naps taken on time. You could call the teacher if you got scared.

Others ran about as he goats or bulls to roar and challenge and shout out their defiance but always to the corral when the bell rang, the bell calling us to return to the safe and regular place, to join the herd in the gray office buildings, faceless glass towers, and to vote on Tuesday for candidates that lie.

But some, I among, wondered farther off alone following an inward eye to places far away under other suns where colors brighter did not run in the rain. And where the teacher held my hand and tried to understand why I cried when they called me a four-eyed brain; who would wait for me after the school bell rang,

And leave the door,

Ajar.

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