What He Meant

I read a poem once to my class
And it was one I’d written.
I’d hoped my students by the writing bug
Would thus be bitten.

A sixth-grade pupil came to me
And asked me, most sincerely,
Which book I’d copied from;
I thought I hadn’t heard him clearly.

“I wrote the poem,” I did reply.
“The words came from my brain.”
It was a fact that he just couldn’t
Really entertain.

He thought a writer had to be
Like some exotic creature,
Most certainly no one he’d know
And surely not his teacher!

Last night I heard a famous writer*
Read from his new book.
I listened, rapt, and just a page
Or two was all it took

To bring me back to teaching days,
But how the table’s turned!
I wondered how that writer knew
The things that he had learned.

I thought of what I’d told that kid
And now, to some extent,
I understand, some years too late,
Exactly what he meant.

*T.C. Boyle