Antonio

How can I explain Antonio? He's not my student. I really don't know him, but he has, will always have the most profound impact on me. He is as close to a saint as I will come. A middle school student with MS, so severe it has quickly eaten his ability to move and will eventually eat his ability to live. Yet, he comes to school every day he can. In a wheelchair, shaking and mute, a living sponge who does not simple soak in live around him, but exudes an energy and will that is hard to describe. His mute will is a model for me and should be for all in school. But life goes on around him and those with all their life ahead of them willing chose to destroy it piece by piece. I do believe God has some rationale for Antonio, but I do wish for a miracle, for a quiet man to walk into our school someday and simple say, "get up and walk." Oh, how nice that would be. Instead, I think that quiet man will come in the cool of the morning and say "get up and walk with me" and Antonio will follow to somewhere without the labors of this world.

My feelings remind me of a poem by Theodore Rotheke I'd read long ago but never quite understood until now. I am neither father or teacher, but will always treasure his presence.

Elegy for Jane
(My student, thrown by a horse)

I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils;
And her quick look, a sidelong pickerel smile;
And how, once startled into talk, the light syllables leaped for her,
And she balanced in the delight of her thought,

A wren, happy, tail into the wind,
Her song trembling the twigs and small branches.
The shade sang with her;
The leaves, their whispers turned to kissing,
And the mould sang in the bleached valleys under the rose.

Oh, when she was sad, she cast herself down into such a pure depth,
Even a father could not find her:
Scraping her cheek against straw,
Stirring the clearest water.

My sparrow, you are not here,
Waiting like a fern, making a spiney shadow.
The sides of wet stones cannot console me,
Nor the moss, wound with the last light.

If only I could nudge you from this sleep,
My maimed darling, my skittery pigeon
.Over this damp grave I speak the words of my love:
I, with no rights in this matter,
Neither father nor lover.