Learning to be creative

I spent most of today, Sunday, in my bare earth studio sculpting a small altar piece for a single stone.

Hunched over, in the quiet of aloneness, I reflected on the one teacher who saw something in the shy eleven year old boy that needed encourageing. A grateful “thank you”, therefore, to Mr. Lax, who, forty five years ago in the sixth grade, inspired a self belief in my ability to learn.

Purple

In the first grade Mrs. Lohr
said my purple teepee
wasn’t realistic enough,
that purple was no color
for a tent,
that purple was a color
for people who died,
that my drawing wasn’t
good enough
to hang with the others.

I walked back to my seat
counting the swish swish swishes
of my baggy corduroy trousers.
With a black crayon
night fall came
to my purple tent
in the middle
of an afternoon.

In second grade Mr. Barta
said draw anything;
he didn’t care what.

I left my paper blank
and when he came around
to my desk
my heart beat like a tom tom.
He touched my head
with his big hand
and in a soft voice said
the snowfall
how clean and white and beautiful.

Alexis Rotella