Weekly Wide-Awake: Nine Verses of the Same Song

[The Stage is on Fire] is a page-turner in which, much like life, there are no easy answers and yet each step of the journey yields insight and hope. This work of heart must not be missed!

Melanie Faith

Creative Writing Teacher, Essayist & Poet.

Katie Steedly’s first-person piece [The Unspeakable Gift] is a riveting retelling of her participation in a National Institutes of Health study that aided her quest to come to grips with her life of living with a rare genetic disorder. Her writing is superb.

The Society of Professional Journalists

In recognition of receiving the Dateline Award for the Washingtonian Magazine essay, The Unspeakable Gift.

I thank you … It is the authenticity of your “class notes”; and it is the delicacy and skill with which you present the nuances of classroom life and the actuality of your students’ and fellow teachers’ lives.

Maxine Greene

Philosopher and Education Scholar

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Weekly Wide-Awake: Nine Verses of the Same Song

The ear finely attuned/ to the extravagant music/ of yellow pears ripening in the scrolled light/ of orchards as if the world/ were perfect/ hears the cicada burst its shell
From Wendell Berry’s “Nine Verses of the Same Song“

There is a particular music to this time of year. The music of warming days and lengthening nights. The music of cicadas calling and fruit ripening. The music of school ending and summer starting. The music of gathering and reunion. The music of rivers slowing and fire flames dancing fast.

I suppose seasons — life’s seasons — have a music all their own, too. Verses of the same song. Of ebb and flow. Of falling apart and coming together. Of beginner’s mind and wisdom. Of perfect timing and unanswered prayers. Indistinguishable from a distance and unmistakable up close.