You Begin

I am thinking of the end of yet another year and the passage of time and the fact that many of you are off to new adventures that those of us who are left behind can only imagine.  For those of you who are leaving Steveston-London, I wish you all the very best.  For those of us who remain behind, let's make sure we have a wonderful restful summer, full of days with no activity and no "to-do" lists, and let's come back in September ready to work and learn and do our best to cooperate with each other.

Here's one of my favourite poems about learning:

You Begin (by Margaret Atwood)

You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
that is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye.
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like.  This is yellow.

Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colours of these nine crayons.

This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
you are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange:  the world burns

Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
your hand to this table,
your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.

This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
which is round but not flat and has more colours
than we can see.

It begins, it has an end,
this is what you will
come back to, this is your hand.

Isn't that lovely?  There are, indeed, more words than you (or I) can ever learn and the world is fuller and more difficult to learn than I (or anyone) have said.  But it is marvellous and wondrous and I wish you all the best in discovering its wonders and marvels.