A High School Teacher’s Lesson on Oedipus and Tiresias
by Elizabeth Meitl
Lines drawn like graphs and waves
Destiny and fate
Squiggling across notebook paper
They know everything
TV and hormones and what the world really is
And was
And will be
It’s true though.
Destiny and fate
Myths and legends
Archetypes crashing down around their bellies
Zeus is god is a Snickers
Braces and all.
Am I a member of their tribe?
A leader or a follower
Or an outcast or a woman with child or
An old lady too slow to keep up?
My place on their lines . . .
They believe in chaos theory
Or abstractions or nothing
They believe what they believe
Desperate for somebody to confirm it.
“Power” a new idea, a sharp spike
On their Wall Street Journal graphs
Grapple and wrestle and try as they might, it is new.
The story of their lives.
I cannot reshape it.
Only give them the clay ideas.
END