The End Of Measuring, Being Measured Is The Beginning Of Learning

I saw old test scores shredded and what we yearned to know
descend like a diamond dust or like a Christmas snow
and the school tomb measured for someone else's life

departed

because from your heart you learned by heart
and not to promulgate the Dark Ages
and not to tune yourself for wages,

strange lyre that you were then
to the Master Musician and his friends or hers,
or was it, colleagues, generally speaking.

how I wish that what we were measured then
could disappear from off the charts
of oddly diagnosed ills

and may they swallow their own pills
as though it had never been.

I wish the stars falling all around us then
in our best dreams
could suffice

for all we hoped for
opening the books each autumn, winter, spring
that were ours alone to find, to go within

to know in a golden hour, alone.

mary angela douglas 2 april 2017