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Geography Master
An enthusiastic group of talented poets started off the New Year at Café Espresso on a cold, but clear night. Anna Birch and Chris Volpe, the evening's featured readers, read lovely, thoughtful poems about some of poetry's eternal subjects: memory, family, childhood, love, marriage.
During the Open Mic portion of the evening, Gerry Duffy read this poem, which recalls his school days in Northern England:
Geography Master
Before the class began and our master entered
the geography room, we'd already found a way,
when his hometown rugby team had lost, to taunt him
by chalking up the score on the blackboard.
A black-robed lay teacher of the earth's wide skin,
he didn't mind our jibes, rarely caned our fingertips.A small area behind our desks, a work table
with rubber rollers, ink and pads, where we
ink-rolled paper maps for every far continent.
We printed the Great Lakes, the long ribbon of
the Mississippi River. I dreamed of cities, Chicago,
Minneapolis, Cincinnati, names with sounds
that belonged in some foreign opera.He taught us language to conjure bold topographies:
chalk escarpments, cuspate forelands, submergent
coastlines, pebble spits, and long shore drift.
Years before I ever crossed Indiana's summer fields
I crudely mapped the corn belt and saw its rising heat,
already part of my imaginary America.
- Gerald Duffy
With rich language and tangible details, the poem charts the dream - a vision of the future - a teacher fostered in one of his students, many years before the distant landscape was to be experienced. What delicious words on the tongue: "chalk escarpments, cuspate forelands, submergent coastlines, pebble spits" - words as delicious and exotic to us as the names of American cities: "Chicago, Minneapolis, Cincinnati" were to a young boy in Yorkshire.
In the course of the poem we travel in both time and space with the
narrator, from the classroom of a favorite teacher where students ink-rolled "paper
maps for every far continent," to the "rising heat" of an Indiana cornfield
across the ocean years later. We share in the pleasure of naming the places and features
of "the earth's wide skin" and in recognizing the power of language to generate
dreams.
-
Harvey Shepard
(hshepard@gmail.com)
"Geography Master" copyright 2006 by Gerald Duffy. Gerry was born and grew up in
Northern England. He came to the United States in 1975 and later studied English
literature and journalism at UNH. He works as a technical editor and lives in Portsmouth
with his wife and son.
Please note: Poems submitted to this column should not exceed 19 lines.