Poetry Friday: Dropping Keys

Tabatha, who is hosting the Poetry Friday roundup today, shared a poem a few weeks ago that I can't get out of my mind. I've had it on my desktop since I first read it. My comment on her post was, "This poem takes my breath away," and it does.

I'm sure there are many possible ways this poem could resonate with a reader, but to me the poem is about teaching, giving people tools to rescue themselves. There's a time for forceful Hollywood-style rescues, where you rush in, guns blazing, and remove captives from the danger they are in, but much more often, people need to rescue themselves, and all a teacher can do is give them keys. Not even give, in the sense of handing over explicitly, but like the poem says, drop them. You don't even always know that what you're dropping is a key, and you hardly ever know exactly how the recipient will use it. As a teacher (or a parent or a friend or whatever the role), am I locking people up more tightly, or am I dropping keys?

 Here's the poem:

Dropping Keys
by Hafiz

the small man
builds cages
for everyone
he
knows.
While the sage,
who has to duck his head
when the moon is low,
keeps dropping keys all night long
for the beautiful
rowdy
prisoners.


Here's another link to today's roundup.