Mr. Westrich

They're talking about tying teacher pay to teacher performance, and tying teacher performance to student outcomes. They like to use words like outcomes. They probably don't read much poetry, whoever they are, and wouldn't know a good line if they wrote one. I remember Mr. Westrich though, my 7th grade English teacher, who died in a boating accident the summer I was 12. I remember his performance—his performances—the way he'd make us all laugh, the way he'd interrupt us whenever we said um or er. "Don't burp," he'd say (he called um and er "burps"). We had to put a penny in the jar every time we "burped." When the jar filled up, he said, he would buy us a cake. And we'd all eat it together. He was as good as his word. I hated school but I loved Mr. Westrich. Whenever we said y'know he'd interrupt us and say, "No, I don't know, tell me!" Our outcomes, if anyone cared to measure them, spanned a lifetime of not burping, of saying what we meant instead of saying y'know. But his greatest performance was dying like that, in high summer, on a sailboat, or under a sailboat—I don't remember how it happened, only that it did, only that he died—his final act. His perfect disappearance. No one I knew and loved had ever died. He was the first one. It taught me what can't be put into words. It taught me the ineffable. It was around that time I first started making poems.