I probably live this poem everyday because I taught high school English for 15 years. The experience, the lessons, the special students, the comrades in arms never leave me.
I don’t play the violin but I do play the piano now that I have time for lessons and a teacher of my own.
I’m not sure I’m standing on the banks of Hades, though introducing students to Greek mythology was one of my favourite escapes. I still look for Orion in the night sky when the aspects are right.
English grammar was another favourite especially a quick fill in class on Latin derivatives and although I never taught the ablative absolute it still haunts me.
I have many of the gifts I was given both physical and emotional. Few were apples, but one was a dog I called Apples.
Still one of my greatest joys was the opportunity to read some of my favourite poems to a classroom of thirty or more students and have the room pause in silence at the end.
“It is Margaret you morn for”