A Great Teacher Poem by Herbert Nehrlich

All year I had behaved,
with not a friggin' hair
or sound of dissonance
in sight for those who looked.
But on that faithful morning
when certain feelings landed
inside the courtyard of that
what you would call the autonomic
and the system without limits,
it happened, and it did so quickly.

No rescue or reprieve, no hiding grace,
it's what they label 'in the act', that counts
he was my best and most benevolent
impressed with me, Herr Teacher.

How could one, ever, forget the shame,
that had attached itself by then
to one's own innocent and altruistic name?
I sometimes think that my mistakes,
my ludicrous misjudgments could well be
a measure of the me who would not even know.