Words of Love

I suppose my love for words is born of malady. Recently, I taught a research class, Strategic Communication. In present tense, how to know a subject I know nothing about? I prepare to teach by learning new things and pass these new things on to the students. Database research. OMG they most likely wail within themselves for Google has it all. Well, it simply does not, I teach. At some point I mess up. Letters I tpye come out switched around and misspelt at which point I say something like "Oh the trials of a dyslexic librarian." The students smile and I sense a relaxation throughout the room. So, the good research continues with one search pasted into the windows of numerous databases. After class a young woman came up to me, "All of my life I have played with words in ways that interest me. I am dyslexic, also." A couple of days later I received a real Thank You note from the professor. Inside the card were comments and names of all the students in the class. One comment touched my heart, "Thank you for sharing your research and being a fellow lover of words." The poignancy comes from the fact that we share this love and her's was the only comment with a flaw that was marked over and rewritten the "right" way.

Yellow Birds Reading

Tenderly

I remember my second grade reading group

the Yellow Birds.

In a dream

I see us sitting on a low riser
the first row of audience participation

reserved for special readers as we

watch the alphabet parade.

26 letters march by

changing before my eyes

into limitless permutations

present within pigments

of color. You know those plastic

magnetic letters children play

with on refrigerator doors?

Letters feel like that to me.

Like I can stick them on my forehead and move

them into spaces of play right here

above my eyes, the alphabet.
This re-arrangement of letters marks not
what I see---it projects what I want to see. I
suppose this sifts down as sensation rather than
aliteral translation of word on printed page.

http://wordlayers.com/YellowBirds.htm

Slow rising dough

Like slow
rising dough
the gift within
dyslexia
waited
patiently for
me to
discover more
to a group of
letters than
an
inharmonious
sounding-out
of words.
Listen up!
There is more
to word.
And so too
with art
when writing
speaks
with voice
within the art.

Oh said the Yellow Bird
Word is thought heard 
Writing is thought seen
ART is thought answered.

Dyslexia, a central character to my story

enabled me to see inside-out and center to edge.

Librarian skill, also central, cataloged the contents of the attic trunk:

words of nonsense? to the trash~

words of daydream? fly them out the window~

cruel hateful words? erase them like grease pen smudges on whiteboard~

words of judgment? light a match and watch them burn.

I also found words of understanding and words of love  

words of equality and words of kindness, and I said

Oh, please, do come and sit with me 

show me what you are.

Teach me all of your words and

I will write them until I can write no more.

Dyslexia

Tenderly,

I remember my second grade reading group

the yellow birds.

In a dream

I see us sitting on a low riser—

the first row of audience participation

reserved for special readers.

I watch the alphabet parade—

26 letters march by

changing before my eyes

into limitless permutations

present within pigments

of color. You know those plastic

magnetic letters that children play

with on refrigerator doors?

Letters feel like that to me—

like I can stick them on my forehead and move them into various spaces of play right there above my eyes. I see the alphabet as 26 pieces of energy each one a bit different from the other. Never do I see these individual characters as part of a stationary whole—where spelling rules immobilize the dance of letters during communication of print to reader. The re-arrangement of letters is not only what I see, it is what I want to see. I suppose, this sifts down to sensation rather than a literal translation of word on printed page.