Through That Door They Come

By Anna Bernard

Anaphora -
"Repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or verses." This is one of the ways through the years that I have expressed my thoughts about teaching. The assignment would be,"Start with this phrase______" and whatever the phrase was, I would begin to write my feelings about classroom life. Consequently I have a series of teacher poems utilizing anaphora.

Through That Door They Come

Through that door they come every September
The overly short or tall
The overly chubby or thin
The just right
Like so many kinds of bears
or flavors of porridge.
Through that door they come year after year
Full of hope and excitement
Varying levels of fear and boldness
Curiosity and lack of
Sociability and shyness
Chalk full of gray matter
And with brains seemingly left behind on the pillow.
Through that door they come
Each one with bright clear eyes
And no idea what they will be
What joys and troubles life will dash upon them
These small sunwarmed beaches of life.
Fathers raking in the money
Fathers in prison
Fathers long gone
and Fathers drowning in too many beers.
Fathers who adore them
and Fathers who deny them.
Through that door they come--
The handiwork of their Mothers
Beloved
Neglected
Read to and well fed
Or short on story and weak in words,
Number loving and Math phobic
Through that door they come and then--
I close it.
And we begin to be a class family,
Another way of experiencing self
Set to balance with whatever and everything
they bring from home
From the treacheries of modern life.
Through that door they'll go
in June
and I will be an icon,
A set of memories and
the builder of a few new neural connections,
But in my heart,always a cheerleader
My megaphone teacher's voice
fading with time