Stephen Hickey's poem for a teacher, Regret: for Val

 

Stephen Hickey

REGRET:  for Val

In the decades since, I think I was a part
of not recognizing a man's decency
which I did not honor or even see.

We were lost souls then, the over-challenged,
the remnants, the frightened, the bullied.
Val offered us the help we could have used, needed.
I guess I was the most frightened of all.
I dropped out early, telling myself I had to 
build myself to prepare, and I never did follow up.
It was surely cowardice and avoidance.
The real need was to defend my being,
not let myself be suppressed.
Val offered us the help we could have used.

The suppression of the self
by the willingly apparently dominant
which left no room for we ourselves….

I heard from Val himself, later, that
the promising one among us
had been forced by his father to withdraw.
His father did not want his son
to learn from a Black man
the self-defense he could not teach him himself.
I feel now the shame, not just the many humiliations
that I have suffered since.
But most of all I feel my inability to support
the man who offered us hope.
And I did not have the decency
to offer him the support he needed.
The group fell apart after that, as we mostly deserved,
and Val’s gift was rejected by us.
I saw his feelings were profoundly hurt.
He knew how to defend himself
from any blows thrown at him in the ring,
but not from the ingratitude
of eight ungrateful cowering souls.
Many things keep me up at night,
some from the despicable horrors
that courage could have allayed, 
but nothing more than the ingratitude
that I showed then.