After my last post I received some nice comments, so I thought it good to share another of Brian’s poems with you. Like the last, this has its roots in our old school. I too remember the teacher who is the subject of these lines.
I just goes to show that we never know how the things we do and say today will impact on the future. It does not matter what station we have in life, we all have our role to play in God’s economy.
I’ll let Brian speak: -
I left school when I was fifteen, and when I was fourteen there was this very wonderful teacher who covered his classroom in maps, and he always said when he retired from school, he would go to certain places on these maps. This poem is called “The Geography Lesson.”
Our teacher told us one day he would leave
And sail across a warm blue sea
To places he had only known from maps,
And all his life had longed to be.
The house he lived in was narrow and grey
But in his mind`s eye he could see
Sweet-scented jasmine clinging to the walls,
And green leaves burning on an orange tree.
He spoke of the lands he longed to visit,
Where it was never drab or cold.
I couldn`t understand why he never left,
And shook off the school`s stranglehold.
Then halfway through his final term
He took ill and never returned.
He never got to that place on the map
Where the green leaves of the orange trees burned.
The maps were redrawn on the classroom wall;
His name forgotten, he faded away.
But a lesson he never knew he taught
Is with me to this day.
I travel to where the green leaves burn,
To where the ocean`s glass-clear and blue,
To places our teacher taught me to love-
And which he never knew.
Brian Patten
Site of our old School. Only the trees remain.
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