Where droplets of water leak through the tin roof
Into the cooking fire
What is an education?
Page after page after page after
She can’t read
Pages.
She can read the weather
She can read the seeds
She can read the incense spiraling up over the roof into the sky to Heaven
I have a book.
I leave it at home and follow her
In my flip flops
Flop after flop after flop after flop down
The stone path to the fields of buried seeds.
We planted the corn
We tilled the corn
The hail is ruining it now
And droplets are leaking through the roof in to the cooking fire
Just one at a time
Plop after plop after plop.
She collects water in tin jugs
For drinking and cooking
From over there, near Bauta dai’s house.
I imagined this place once
When I read about it in a book
My education began when I began
Tearing the pages from the spine
Page after page after page after
LISTEN.
What is this world anyway?
An education.
Pick up your pen again
And again and again and again and again
You must send something
A gift to the future
That somebody can rip in to beautiful pieces
And put in the fire
Where the smoke seeps
Up under a gap in the roof up into the sky up to Heaven
And comes down again
As drop after drop after drop after drop
Of rain.

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