Raven Gets Meta by Laura Da’

from Tributaries

Raven’s making time in the public school system.
On the first day of instruction he forgets the syllabus,

improvises, tells the class a story about himself.
How, in his younger days, he was one of the many

who helped to stipple the night sky with light. Believe it,
or don’t. Many others presumed

to use the stars
to cast connect-the-dot sketches of their own likeness

onto the endlessly beckoning blackboard,
but he threw his lights

in a five-minutes-left-of-recess-heads-up frenzy.
Raven prefers his constellations wild

and that leads to tonight’s homework:
Sneak out of your beds.

Walk barefoot outside.
Look up. Raven smirks at the orange chairs left pushed out.

The personification of Raven as a public-school teacher is a great premise for a poem, and I appreciate the couplet structure as well as it gives the poem a quick moving momentum that matches the frenzied, wild perspective of the Raven who is working to undermine “scientific” understandings of the stars (everything has its one specific name) with a more chaotic, personal understanding.

Mid-semester, the administration calls Raven to the carpet
for a certain cavalier attitude

towards the test-prep curriculum. He slinks late
into the meeting, feathers rustling

at the Power Point projected on the bare west wall
assessing average reading scores

and annual measurable objectives.
Echoes come in from down the hall:

See the world in a grain of sand from the English classroom
and the science lab’s

butterfly flicker moving polar ice.
Raven’s been around the block, has wrapped talons

around stones so large
they made the cosmos.

I can’t help but repeat and revel in the sonic joy of “the administration calls Raven to the carpet / for a certain cavalier attitude // towards the test-prep curriculum,” and how it contrasts with the unpleasantness of the subject matter, almost like Raven is, through the language used, struggling to subvert and escape the administration.

Raven doesn’t give a shit
about his students making adequate yearly progress

on any standardized test.
But when asked to imagine seeing any one child contained

in the pixelated dot flicker on the bar graph
dancing across the projection screen,

a shrill caw
spirals up the length of him.

These tricksters.
Looking into galaxies and yearning for self-portraits.

The poem wraps up nicely by tying the constellations and stars to the pixels of the projector showing statistical averages of achievement, drawing back to that initial metaphor of the desire to use standardized measurements rather than taking joy in individual learning. The reference to the administration as “These trickers” by Raven (traditionally the trickster himself) is a nice touch, and I love the suggestion that they are really only interested in seeing reflections of their own achievements in the students rather than truly opening them up to the wonder and beauty of the world around them.