The Beautiful Changes

Have you noticed the beauty of the earth this week? Did you take it in today? It is brilliant in every sense of the word.

Today, I led a school-wide assembly of Kindergarten through fifth grade students right after a breathtaking drive up Signal Mountain in the flush of autumn. It was like a rainbow fell from the sky. I could smell the rain that would come within a few minutes, and I felt overpowered by my own senses. The idea that I would have to go inside a building for the next seven hours had the same effect on my face as if gravity had just increased seven fold. The first person to see me in the school building asked me what was wrong; her concern was so great, she thought a close relative of mine had died.

The cafetorium—which makes neither an adequate cafeteria or auditorium—in which our assembly would be held is in the center of the school. It has no windows and only those hideous bluish lights that drain the color right out of clothes and skin. I set up the microphones and the CD player and the podium. I seriously thought of urging the teachers to take their children for a walk in the woods for 40 minutes instead of subjecting them to an assembly. It didn’t matter to me that it was raining, or that an author was coming to tell the children stories, or that we were supposed to be launching our book fair.

I did the only thing I could. I ran to the library and googled three poems to read to the children and faculty.

Once the assembly started, I could tell the kids were restless. They probably wouldn’t want to hear poetry while sitting on the cold linoleum floor under the miserable lighting. Maybe a story would be better.

I started by asking the two questions I asked you at the beginning of this post, and the response came back as an overwhelming “No.” Who could not notice this? The afternoon before when I walked to my car, I stepped out of the building and suddenly became incapable of movement. My nostrils flared, my eyes dilated, my heart raced, my mouth slacked. Something as beautiful as summer was now transformed into something else beautiful, and while nothing had really changed, everything had changed. One of my students wrote about a time that she was watching a horse over a fence and her father leaned over and whispered, “She’s yours”, and when she looked back at the horse, everything was different. The horse was different somehow, just like the acreage surrounding my school. And the people, the students, the parents, the teachers around me were talking about dogs and video games and new clothes and there was an argument, even. How could anyone be talking? I thought of this when the children in assembly said they had not seen the beauty of the earth, and I thought of a story I read in third grade, a science fiction story of a colony of people that lived on Jupiter, and so I told it to this wiggling audience.

The story takes place in an elementary school room on Jupiter, and everyone is excited because this is the day that they will see the sun. With the atmosphere being what it is on Jupiter, the colonists only see the sun for a few hours every seven years. As a prank, the students lock one girl in the closet for a few minutes, but then the sun comes out. The students forget about the girl and race outside and stare at the sun until it disappears. And while I didn’t say it, I felt like the girl locked inside by the students, except that these students weren’t even going out to look at the sun, either.

So, I read them a poem that my first grade teacher, Mrs. Martin, read to me. I don’t know if it is great poetry or not; I cannot be that objective about it because I love it. I love it because it is about autumn and because I loved Mrs. Martin.

 

October's Party 
George Cooper 

October gave a party;
The leaves by hundreds came-
The Chestnuts, Oaks, and Maples,
And leaves of every name.
The Sunshine spread a carpet,
And everything was grand,
Miss Weather led the dancing,
Professor Wind the band.

The Chestnuts came in yellow,
The Oaks in crimson dressed;
The lovely Misses Maple
In scarlet looked their best;
All balanced to their partners,
And gaily fluttered by;
The sight was like a rainbow
New fallen from the sky.

Then, in the rustic hollow,
At hide-and-seek they played,
The party closed at sundown,
And everybody stayed.
Professor Wind played louder;
They flew along the ground;
And then the party ended
In jolly "hands around."

 

When I was grown, I met Mrs. Martin again. She was old when I was in first grade, and she was older and shorter when I saw her in the parking lot. But she seemed younger. She had a kayak on her car, and just that was like discovering an entirely new person. It is amazing that beautiful things change into other beautiful things, like summer to autumn; younger people into older people; strangers into friends. This is why I read this second poem to the students.

 

The Beautiful Changes

BY RICHARD WILBUR

 One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides

The Queen Anne’s Lace lying like lilies

On water; it glides

So from the walker, it turns

Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of you

Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes.

The beautiful changes as a forest is changed

By a chameleon’s tuning his skin to it;

As a mantis, arranged

On a green leaf, grows

Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves

Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.

Your hands hold roses always in a way that says

They are not only yours; the beautiful changes

In such kind ways,

Wishing ever to sunder

Things and things’ selves for a second finding, to lose

For a moment all that it touches back to wonder.

Those poor children, having to endure such desperation thrust upon them. They didn’t even know what happened. “Did you like those poems?” I asked, and it was silent except for some boys in the back who shouted “No!” and a few Kindergartners who shouted “Yes!” because that’s how each group responds to everything. I did not read the third poem.

“When you go outside today, children,” I concluded. “Look up. Look around. It will be gone in a few hours.” To which someone said, “What? The sun?” and a few teachers chuckled.

And then the safari music started from the public address system, the PTA mothers took the microphone to launch the book fair, and I went out on the front porch of the school to watch the rain wash the rainbow off the trees.