University of Minnesota
minnesota writing project
center for writing
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Jennifer Budenski

© 2006

budenski reading

Monday Morning at David M. Lilly Plaza

Each tree has a purpose,
planted as the Greeks planned their columns
to please the eye from every
direction, here a poetry of concrete,
bark and leaf, a respite
among city buildings and traffic
noise, the sprinklers like crickets
as in the Chinese garden
where my students recited their poem
for me, for English practice—
We are the morning of the day
they began in unison, carefully
aligned, well-spaced and beaming
the energy of the earnest learner.
This memory is a garden I visit
to recover balance, symmetry, the art
of my profession after too many terms
among dropouts and burnouts
so tragically disenfranchised
from poetry they say, You’re teaching
in a foreign language. Or, I say,
an ancient one.

View Jen's Video Poem:

By What Luck