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Note: Next Read-Around is Thursday, June 8, 2023
at 5:00 PM PST

My Thoughts

We've all had that quiet nightmare in one form or another of having missed some critical lesson in life that would've allowed us to live life fully and richly, to be whole and complete as human beings, to know how to do the right thing, and grow wise enough to easily open the childproof jar. Brad Aaron Modlin’s poem, What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade, beautifully illustrates that low-grade fear we can't seem to weed out from the garden of adulthood. Modlin uses clever metaphors to capture the elusive thing we think we missed, like how to find meaning in pumping gas; and the wonderfully poignant lines about falling asleep without feeling you had forgotten to do something and how to believe the house you wake in is your home. If only we could go back to the drawing board and sit in on Mrs. Nelson’s class, re-live our lives in the grace of that knowledge, and feel, unequivocally, that we are enough, that our lives do add up to something.

I suspect the hundreds of questions that leave us cold and keep us up at night looking for whatever we have lost might still creep in through the back door. The beauty of learning young is that there are fewer filters, fewer walls to scale, fewer gooves in the record. And the fourth grade, around age 10, is the cusp of the age of disillusionment, the magic veneer of childhood is already wearing thin, topling under the wieght of the world. I recall my 10 year old self had some inkling there was a complicated future on the horizon. It is an age when one can still take something in whole, without knowing what it means, and form a lasting impression. It’s an age when one wants to grow up, wants to be treated more like an adult. In other words, it’s the beginning of that elusive desire to add up to something in the world.

  1. Read the poem 

  2. Do your own reflection on it, noting what it inspires in you

  3. Feel free to use your own reflection as your prompt or…

  4. Use the selection of prompts in the column on the right

  5. Pick one that inspires you and write (feel free to use only one or write several poems using different prompts) or…

  6. Don’t use any of the provided prompts and follow your inspiration from wherever it comes

What You Missed that Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade

Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen
to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas,

how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took
questions on how not to feel lost in the dark

After lunch she distributed worksheets
that covered ways to remember your grandfather’s

voice. Then the class discussed falling asleep
without feeling you had forgotten to do something else—

something important—and how to believe
the house you wake in is your home. This prompted

Mrs. Nelson to draw a chalkboard diagram detailing
how to chant the Psalms during cigarette breaks,

and how not to squirm for sound when your own thoughts
are all you hear; also, that you have enough.

The English lesson was that I am
is a complete sentence.

And just before the afternoon bell, she made the math equation
look easy. The one that proves that hundreds of questions,

and feeling cold, and all those nights spent looking
for whatever it was you lost, and one person

add up to something.

—Brad Aaron Modlin
https://www.bradaaronmodlin.com/

Prompt Ideas

  1. Recall an elementary school teacher that impacted you and journal or write a poem about that teacher or about your experience with that teacher.

  2. Modlin uses wonderful metaphors aobut life lessons that would have helped when young. Jouurnal or write a list poem about the lessions you wish you had received early on.

  3. Take any one of Modlin’s enigmatic lines and use it as your prompt: What meaning might you find in pumping gas? How can peeling potatoes be a form of prayer? How do you know when the house you wake in is your home?

  4. What life lesson would you put on a chalkboard diagram for your 4th grade self?

  5. Journal or write a poem about a (metaphoric?) life lesson from a particular subject in elementary school (Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, etc.)

  6. Journal or write a poem about a situation or a time when you felt you missed some critical lesson in life, or something you suspect everybody else knows but you don’t know.

  7. Journal or write a poem about “adding up to something” in life.

  8. As usual, write about anything else in the poem or in life that inspires you.