The Guidance Teacher was at the door
\nI could see him smiling at me
\nThrough the little window
\nNot a good sign.<\/p>\n
The class a small pleasant group of
\nVery active learning-impaired kids
\nIdentified as \u201cBasic-modified\u201d
\nWatched as I moved from Jimmy\u2019s desk and
\nWalked over to the door<\/p>\n
Who was being called to Guidance
\nThey all wondered
\nSomebody calling from home
\nSick beat up drunk
\nDo you want me to
\nDrop off your lunch
\nThat you left on the kitchen counter.<\/p>\n
I opened the door
\nBehind the Guidance Counsellor
\nStood two very tentative oriental children
\nThey could almost have passed
\nFor local Mohawks except
\nWith large wide faces
\nAnd very different eyes
\nSmiling that smile of
\nIf I were an orphan
\nYou would adopt me
\nVery neatly dressed
\nA boy and a girl.<\/p>\n
These are Kim and Janet Park
\nThey don\u2019t speak English
\nSo we thought you
\nWould be the best place
\nTo put them
\nI would be the best place
\nSeveral intriguing problems with that sentence
\nDefining me as a place for one
\nBut the largest task facing me now
\nWas how to help these two
\nEmbarrassed smiling children
\nWhose information slips I held in my hand.<\/p>\n
Come in I said.<\/p>\n
Jump three months
\nTo Christmas eve
\nIt is already dark out
\nWe are almost ready to sit
\nFor dinner the doorbell rings
\nIt is Kim with a brightly wrapped
\nBox of a certain size
\nI see the car on the street behind him
\nMerry Christmas Sar
\nI wave to the car
\nHe is gone before I
\nA gold box containing
\nA bottle of aged gensing wine.<\/p>\n
It used to be a custom to
\nGive the teacher a present
\nAt Christmas some soap a pen
\nSome stationery something formulaic
\nThat was the first present
\nI had seen in almost twenty years
\nI thought of the things those kids had
\nTaught me and the kids in the class
\nWho pitched in to teach them English
\nAbout the poetry of being Korean
\nAnd I felt hopelessly outclassed but loved<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Guidance Teacher was at the door I could see him smiling at me Through the little window Not a good sign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,7,3],"tags":[440],"class_list":["post-72","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creative-writing","category-mild-mannered-opinion","category-poetry","tag-allegory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}