Teach Us, Then - By Richard Blanco
We taught you: how to unravel the spin of our galaxy and unwind the spirals of our DNA; how to spy on the invisible splitting of atoms and the bloom of our dividing cells; how to listen to the footsteps of our history marching through all the firestorms and tearstains of our wars.
We taught you how to savor all the colors of a painting, taste our insatiable desire to render the beauty of our pain, and pain of our beauty; how to appreciate the art of algebra, and the algebra of art; how to dance with a poem, let it lead you though the rhythms of your life with all its beats of joy and pauses of sorrow.
We taught you: how to stare into the mirror of the moon and trust the light shimmering in your eyes. How to decipher the creases of your palms and the wrinkles of mountains; how to listen to the truth of your thoughts as certain as the will of roaring waves.
We taught you how to teach yourselves, hoping someday you will teach us all that we couldn’t teach you. Teach us, then: today, tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.
Teach us: how to remap the world without borders that cage people in the colors of their countries without enough, though there is enough for all of us; how to melt our bullets into bells, let them ring a resounding end to the subject of blood in our classrooms.
Teach us: how to beseech all the life we’ve named, studied, and endangered: bless the pandas’ pantomime, bless the tigers’ stalking eyes, bless the wails of our blue whales; how to make peace with them, with each other, and with the earth so that we may not become as endangered as we are estranged from one another.
Teach us: how to stop thinking of ourselves as red and blue states shouting at each other; how to look instead into each other’s eyes this morning, and tomorrow morning, and every morning, and see not what we are, but who we are.
Teach us: how to say: I see you (not because you’re a man or a woman or anything in-between); how to say: I see you (not because you’re black or white or anything in-between); how to say: I see you (not because you’re straight or gay or anything in-between).
Teach us, then: how to see each other, how to love, how to reach the stars, together.
