Wisteria: Swamp Country

School House

79 School House Nothing fancy, never fancy, every board counted, every nail, every bench, every piece of shingle, nothing fancy, just love. the hands of men with nothing but hope in their fingers, tenderly grew this school from the swamp-soft earth, there under the canopy of ancient trees; grew this sanctuary for learning, a school where once there was bush. and the children came, soaked to the bone with morning rain and the discriminating splatter of mud by the wheels of the yellow school buses ferrying the white children to their brick edifice where they learned difference. and we would wait with towels to ready them— shaken but not broke—to learn. there is nothing here, and here is a germ of possibility. the wind wailed late in nineteen forty-two, and we trembled at the fate of the temple 80 while we held up the walls of our homes straining against the blast outside. in the early morning, when all was calm we walked with tools, timber and fearful hearts into the dense madness of the swamp to find the school standing tall, miraculously saved from the howl and the crash of old rotting trees. Come Monday morning, the children came, faces aglow with new hope, new hope. ...