WHAT HE FINDS

by Mather Schneider

First came the men
who carved figures in rocks
on the hills in the
desert.
Eons later the art teachers came
like lizards slinking
from the sea.
The teachers soon dominated the land.
Their philosophy:
the soul is a spring
you have to pay them to drink from.
They couldn't understand
how anything had survived
so long without their
instruction
and they institutionalized art
so that it would never slip
from their sticky
paws.
They brought it all inside
the safety of the yellowed walls
and stuck stiff
to the single agenda:
preservation of the status quo.
Every once
in a great while
a student will summon the courage
to walk away to the
desert
and fend for
himself.
What he finds
out is how
strong those first
men were,
how small one feels
alone under
the stars, and how hard
that rock is.