A Promise to My Students in the Age of Common Core

I will start each day with a poem,
and end it with one.

We will notice the caterpillar
creeping along the window ledge
and the kindness
of one of you to another,
and bear witness in poems.

We will marvel at language
that startles us, that makes
old thoughts spin dizzily
into new ones, and share
that transformation, calling it
what it is – poetry.

I will arm you for the world
beyond college and career:
to weave words
that will matter
when love comes or goes,
or death, or war, or sunrise,
to use them to affirm your place
on this oddly tilted planet,
to find what is common
among its diverse and distant people,
to dig as deeply as you can
to discover life at its core.