ASL Lullaby?

Kim Stafford asked me what a lullaby might look like in American Sign Language.

Before I assign this to my class, I thought I’d throw in an attempt of my own. I know that most of the students will blow mine away, since they are native signers and have a library of incredible descriptives at their fingertips. My expression is stored in my tongue and comes out with all of these little polluters: prepositions, articles, verb endings and other little clouders of pure conceptual thinking. Those details aren’t absent in ASL, just more subtle: an arc of the eyebrow, a nose crinkle, a curled lip.

This is the first thing I’ve “written” on my fingers first, then interpreted into English.

All is quiet, time to sleep;
Close your eyes,
Baby sweet.

The stars are twinkling out in space;
The moon is rains sapphires on your face.

The wind is blowing the trees around;
The grass bends over on the ground.

All is quiet, time to sleep;
Close your eyes, baby sweet.

Outside the door, the future waits;
But you’re safe inside from indifferent fate.

Joy and grief, peace and strife,
Breath and Death: your little life.

All is quiet, time to sleep;
Close your eyes, baby sweet.

Your pillow’s soft, your blanket warm;
Love will rock you in her arms.

All is quiet, time to sleep;
Close your eyes, baby sweet.

(Video coming soon…)

No Child’s Behind Left

I can’t do everything administration tells me to do:
I can’t leave them behind while I run
With the string,
“Fly, damn it, fly!”

I can’t only see their writing
As a succession of errors:
The stuff they get right
Makes me cry.

I can’t count each time their subjects
And verbs agree:
Sometimes there is magic in those arguments.

I can’t sit still in staff meetings:
They give us chairs that spin.

I can’t always speak with authority:
They can put me in my place.

I can’t pluck sweet fruits
From their fingers
Then smear them on an IEP.

I can’t quiet my stage whispers, my dancing
Eyebrows, my screaming fingers.

I can’t always land on my feet:
Sometimes I can’t find the ground at all.