Blue Mountain Arts Poetry Contest

Learning
by Lynne Bassler

Twenty-Second Contest
SECOND Place

I wasn't a deep child,
a mental spelunker
who brushed aside cobwebs 
of the obvious 
to peer into dark chasms
of possibility,

nor the type to build
the kind of science projects
that always astounded me -
all plywood and pulleys,
fulcrums, gears, fizzing liquids
and lit bulbs, unfathomable
in their blue-ribboned genius,

nor one who readily grasped
that "x" and "y" had gone AWOL
from the alphabet to hide
among the enemy, math.

I was the girl who gathered words -
groups, lines, rows, bouquets,
bunches of lovely language -
to tell you who I wasn't. 

To explain who I was
would have required an understanding 
I was too young to explore
without deliberate guides.

And then they came, like miners
with lights shining from foreheads,
the teachers who showed me 
how to braid rough words 
into a weight-bearing cord,

how to write "I am the one with the rope, 
the rappeller who learns best
in the brave dangle 
between the kick-off from stone 
and the reconnect of feet
to solid foundations."

About the Author
Lynne lives and writes in Pennsylvania, where she lives with her husband, Steve. They have two grown children and a grandson.