sara Etgen-Baker Poet Free verse

Notes About The Poem

This is the heirloom teaching bell referenced in this poem.  It originally belonged to my great grandmother, Ivy Morain, who taught in a one-room school house in the Kansas prairie.  It was handed down from generation to generation of teachers in our family, the folks we called "Keepers of the Bell." While teaching, I kept the bell safe, later passing it on to my niece (a teacher) who recently gave it to her daughter who began her teaching career.

Ivy Morain (bottom row, 2d from the right) with her brood of childern one of whom was my grandmother (bottom row to the far left) 

THE TEACHING BELL

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It wasn't grand,  
this bell upon Ivy’s desk –  
just hammered tin  
nothing distinct,   
a traveler's relic,  
perhaps,  
or bought for pennies  
at the county fair.  
No polished gleam,  
no silvered tongue,  
just simple weight  
in weathered wood  
it clung.

But when her hand,  
thin-veined and strong  
from chalk-dust,  
ink,  
and garden-loam,  
reached out –  
a stillness fell  
across the room  
like held-in breath.  
Then came the tap:  
a single, clear,  
unhurried ping 
that seemed too small  
to hold such things.

Yet out it flew!  
A silver thread  
unspooling fast  
across the dew-wet  
pasture grass,  
over the stile  
where Billy paused  
his milking-pail,  
through orchard rows  
where apples hung  
like sleepy moons.  

It skimmed the creek  
where minnows flashed,  
startled the crow  
on the fencepost,  
sailed past 
farms
where hay 
was baled…
It flew!

That tiny sound,  
that humble ring,  
had wings.  
It called the freckled boy  
still wiping sleep  
from sun-shot eyes,  
the girl whose braids  
were barley-gold,  
the quiet one.  
It gathered them,  
like scattered seeds  
on shifting wind,  
to this one room  
schoolhouse
where maps unfurled  
and numbers bloomed  
and stories hummed  
beneath the rafters,  
warm and low.

The bell sat still.  
Its work was done.  
Just hammered tin  
beneath the sun  
that slanted through  
the dusty pane.  
But in its silence,  
echoed plain:  
the scrape of chairs,  
the turning page,  
the hopeful rustle  
of a bygone age  
being called –  
not ordered,  
summoned –  
by a sound
that knew  
its own small
but mighty
weight.

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Peter Tucker October 12, 2025 at 9:55 PM Beautifully done, focussing so much memory and history into this diminutive object, showing how much power and duration can be associated with the everyday sara Etgen-Baker October 14, 2025 at 9:03 AM thank you, Peter, for such insightful and kind comments. Appreciate your visit.

Line Gauthier October 12, 2025 at 8:17 PM Your poems about heirlooms are most pleasant to read and it's particularly nice to imagine how truly precious they are for your family. My grandmother was also a teacher in a one-room school. Both also quilters, they would have been best friends, no doubt. sara Etgen-Baker October 14, 2025 at 9:03 AM thanks for finding my heirloom poems pleasant to read...those words mean a lot to me. Agree, no doubt they would've been best friends.....quilting buddies :-)

Gershon Wolf October 12, 2025 at 7:17 PM Astonishingly vivid recollection of 'a simple bell' that rang 100 times its weight. Bravo, Sara. A fave for me. Thank you, Gershon