Good morning, my friends. One of the first poems I read as a child was “The Arrow and the Song” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. We all know the first two lines. However, the entire poem serves as a beautiful and powerful reminder for all of us, perhaps none more so than for teachers and writers.

Here is that poem:

I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

This poem came to mind when I was asked about a school principal’s comments to my mother when I was in the fourth grade. It was during a wonderful Wisconsin Writers Association Podcase with Ken Humphrey and Luella Schmidt (https://wiwrite.org/podcast ). It was triggered by my bio, which reads in part: “Nick Chiarkas grew up in the Al Smith housing projects in the Two Bridges neighborhood on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. When he was in the fourth grade, his mother was told by the principal of PS-1 that “Nick was unlikely ever to complete high school, so you must steer him toward a simple and secure vocation.”

The question was about my wanting to prove the principal wrong. Usually, I respond to this question by saying it could have been a wee bit of a desire for a reckoning and let it go with that. But these were writers like me and teachers listening; they ought to know the power of their words. The truth. So, here’s the truth I shared that day.

I was nine years old, sitting outside the principal’s office. It was the end of the day, and his secretary was gone. Just me, and I could hear every derogatory word he was telling my mother about me. My mother was a poor Italian second-generation immigrant who thought God ordained principals. A teacher who had left for the day picked up a bag of groceries and returned to the school to retrieve papers she inadvertently left on her desk. She stopped in front of me. Clearly, she could hear the principal. She took my hand, and we went to the teacher’s lounge. She made a pot of tea for us.

At this point, I was feeling like a big shot. She took a poundcake with white frosting from her shopping bag and asked if I liked cake. I said, “Yeah, especially the icing.” She unwrapped and cut the cake horizontally, leaving about an inch of cake and a half inch of icing. We enjoyed tea and cake, and we talked. We talked. I don’t think any adult had spoken with me to that point in my life. We talked about her growing up, and she asked about me, what I think about, what I care about. She gave me a book of poems, “Yesterday and Today,” by Louis Untermeyer (I still have it). She told me to read it. I said, “I can’t read poems.” She said, “I believe you can. Read them and read everything and anything you can find.” And then she said, “And, Nicky, always eat the icing off the cake.”

When I was eleven, I had a job delivering groceries. After handing over the order to the customer, who paid me in cash (with a tip, if I was lucky). Local gangs knew I had money in my pocket when returning, and they would chase me. I was good at running across the rooftops, jumping from roof to roof. They would give up, and I would run to the roof of the New York Public Library, gaining access through a small construction door, hide in the fiction section, and read until it was safe to leave.

When I received my doctorate, I tracked down that teacher and mailed it (actually a copy of it) to her with a note that said, “See what you did.”

That teacher made me feel valued, her advice empowered me, and reading gave me wings. I hope teachers know how powerful their words are. Kids remember you, we readers remember your words, and you can make a child fly.

Thanks for dropping in; I look forward to your comments and hope you’ll return.

Peace, love, music, and writing,

Nick