Thoughts that make the grade

I was told that I had to give grades to the students, which I wasn't particularly interested in doing

Merce Cunningham

So there they are in front of me

A pile of papers

student papers for me to grade

Is that a tear stain I see in the corner of this one?

Or did his lunch drip on the paper as he worked?

Thousands and thousands of words from hundred and hundred of students

Have come across my desk over the years

Some appearing from careful thinking and placed up the page like self portraits

Others slapped and slung like a Jackson Pollack

but with no less need to be understood- perhaps more

Perhaps genius lay within both

or neither

How will I know?

What were they doing as they wrote?

Were they huddled in a corner table at Starbucks...
as I was when I wrote the last lines of my dissertation
 somewhere on the Upper West Side

A table at the library?

In front of their TV?

What are they hoping to say with all those carefully- and some not so carefully- typed words?

 I do not know as I begin to read- and sometimes when I am finished grading,
I still am not certain

But as I try to follow their train of thought -
sometimes having to run to stay on their track-

Other times, I find myself sitting by the side of their rhetorical road
awestruck by their mental travels,

I understand Merce's reticence to "grade"

but grade I do...because that is my part in this little drama of words

and that's poetiquejustis

Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.

2 Timothy 2:15