EVERY LESSON LEARNED is a reflection on the process of education...with a small 'e'...and the Lessons I really learned....I wonder at the Terrible Importance of both sets of Lessons...hope I've been a teacher and learner of the 'set' I wrote of, here....

EVERY LESSON LEARNED


some how
thrown away

the ones I thought
were not
important
Were

the lessons
the lessons

were told which ones were
important
believed them true
all the way

were told what we needed
all of us
to learn
tried those lessons
quite a bit

learned some
some, not
those were the ones
that would have
pruned me
nicely
to be
nice

those were not
the lessons
I remember now

not at all

I remember
all the lessons
I wasn't supposed
to learn

I recall these so well
they are part
of me
like my own skin

I would not trade
these lessons
for love
or money

they are in me
like my heart is
part of
my very soul

I would learn them all
again and again

how to love
how to accept love
how to hate
how to take hate
how to wage war
how to wage peace
how to sin
how to forgive
how to give
how to take
how to make sex
how to feel sex
how to feel fully
how to take away
pain
how to stand
pain
how to be very kind
how to be very stern
how to lose
how to take loss
how to be happy
how to show sad
how to be compasssion
how to live compassion
how to
live fully
how to
die fully
how to face death
in self
in our others
how to keep learning
facing the young
without lies
how to fear truly
how to be brave
truly
how to be honest
how to see rightly
how to greet success
how to be in failure
how to fail again
how to behave human
how to face inhumanity
how to cry deeply
how to laugh and laugh
and laugh
and laugh

how to howl mad
at every deadly moon

every lesson learned
every lesson learned
every lesson
of this sort

I have relished
again and again

I have
learned