Claudia Jensen Dudley --- cjensendudley@aol.com

Claudia Jensen Dudley (San Francisco County) has taught with CPITS since 1990.  For many years she has been resident poetry artist in the Richmond District After School Collaborative.  There she has expanded as a storyteller, bringing individual stories and many myth cycles to students.  She's published a volume of poetry, The Fragrant Fire, a chapbook, In the Scale of Worlds, and has set student poetry to music and had it performed.  She is currently setting eight poems to music in conjunction with a volume of narrative poetry, Waters of the Afternoon.  Other callings include reflexology, piano playing, and her dear family.   All in all she considers her life a true "embarrassment of riches."

Grace at Midwinter

Always new, this vigil we keep
the self dissolved in pain
with our lit candles at the threshold
obeisant to rain
of day and night yields
ever to fire feeds
the bread we have always eaten
the spark and hope of reeds
but now, for the first time, tasted
made whole and hollow both
as rough to the touch as golden
within the palm of earth
at our lips, received, the opening
we who are but the prayer
of sudden summer in the heart
breathed out the reed with air
                  ~Claudia Jensen Dudley

 

After the Field Trip

Shirley, the gentle tutor, found a trapped mouse
after the field trip, in the room with the kids' backpacks,
caught on adhesive cardboard.   Streaks of blood
were on the cardboard, but the mouse was still moving,
pulling, pulling.   There was a strange stillness
in that white cardboard, in that non-release,
and the mouse had black bright eyes.  
Could we pry him off without injuring him more?   No.

So Shirley carried him outside, followed
by five of our wildest boys.   I stayed inside,
passing out Easter treats, gathering up nametags,
looking at my watch, impatient for day's end.

Then came to, suddenly.   Ran out to the playground to be
with the mouse and Shirley.   To be and do I knew not what.
Where was she?   Kids everywhere in the large playground,
running, running.   Then I saw the five boys, still for once,
in the far corner of the playground, hanging onto the fence.
Shirley's dark head was beyond them, outside the yard.
I saw Shirley's hands go up, down.   A pause.

Then she walked toward the gate, back into the yard.
She said to me, "I had to do it, I couldn't let it suffer."
I told her I could not have done it.
She said, "I couldn't touch it myself.   I dropped a soda can
with ice on top of it.   I feel so guilty."
I told her she did right.  
And knew, again, I didn't have the strength to do it.

Back in the cafeteria, one of the boys pointed
to Shirley and said, "Those are the hands of a killer!"
Shirley chased him around the cafeteria.
                  ~Claudia Jensen Dudley

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