MY EDUCATION WAS INTERFERING WITH MY LEARNING

My Education Was Interfering With My Learning
Age 14-17, Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire, 1958-1962
-- This is one poem, in an autobiographical series of poems, I posted here at WriteSpike. Go to my stories section for others. They are in chronological order. --

The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
~ Albert Einstein ~

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.
~ Pablo Picasso ~

At 10 pm my lights out
I listened for the heavy-footed master
who stopped and checked each door
for cracks of light
as he descended the circular stairwell

I knew the sound
when he hit the bottom
- a faint echo up the well -
letting me know that danger had passed

but to be sure
I pushed clothes against the cracks
pressed the blind flat right up to the window
then covered my desk lamp
with a heavy flannel shirt

at last
my light back on
the time was mine
and for stolen hours
I could see things my way

condemned to four years
at my father's alma mater
I thought I had no choice but to survive -
yet this world was not my world
and their gods were not my gods

surrounded by rules of grammar and logic
I craved a different realm:
sensual, emotional, wordless

and where I escaped to
was my father's love
of classical music -
memories of evenings
with ginger ale and ginger snaps
as we listened to symphonies

so at midnight I played Sibelius,
Beethoven, Brahms, Bach and Bartok
on my earphones -
with no teacher to tell me
how to hear what I was hearing

alone I learned
to grasp directly what they were saying -
it was just between the composer and me

and sometimes after an hour
with a piece I knew note for note
I was moved to 'air conduct' -
a secret I shared with no one

then
about one or two, my freedom spent
I tore down my world
and fell to bed
- homework undone -
knowing that at seven
I would rise again
to shake off my lack of sleep
and chalk up another day