Teaching, too, is labor. Everyday
to be up to the task, everyday
the master of a hundred worlds,
of casual words, and of causal words,
to confront the faces added to or taken
from. Do you know when you add a
thought there, it shows in the eyes,
it shows in the mouth’s subtle creases?
Do you know, when you stop a thought,
when you turn it aside with a straight
line, with the shortest distance from there
to here, it shows in the brow’s labor?
Exhaustion. Do you know that teaching
is exhaustion, everyday reaching out for
youth’s heavy hope, and your own
always holding, putting nothing down?
Teaching, too, is aching shoulders and back,
tired arms, legs, a heart’s hard work.

Nominated for the National Book Award, the Eric Hoffer Book Award, and nominated three times for the Pulitzer Prize, J. R. Solonche is the author of forty books of poetry and co-author of another. He lives in the Hudson Valley.