Thanks for today

It was great to see everyone. Here's the text of the poem you all inspired today.

Ancestors

there are twenty-five ghosts in this room
standing behind me and all around

moving in and out of chairs
perched on bookshelves and under desks

my posse
my choir

singing backup to verses
we sang all summer long

the shades of their fingerprints
dust the chalk rails and the dictionaries

the memory of their footfalls
reverberates off the concrete slabs

the collected wisdom of their high voltage brains
fuels the furnace that warms this room

and makes a place where
you are loved and brilliant and will succeed

in spite of yourselves
and in spite of your plan

and in spite of the fact
that you can’t spell perseverance

there are twenty-five ghosts in this room
who’ve beaten the path into submission

cut back the thorny brambles
and softened the soil

where you will place your feet
to tap out the rhythm of your prose

so lift up your faces
make an altar of your rhymes

es el dia de los muertos