Alan Walowitz – Time-on-Task

Walowitz LE P&W Vol 4 Nov-Dec 2025

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Live Encounters Poetry & Writing 16th Anniversary Volume Four
November- December 2025

Time-on-Task, poems by Alan Walowitz.


Time-on-Task

Though not recommended in The New Teacher Handbook,
I call the roll every day,
say each child’s name,
though my boss might come by
and record that, and all my faults,
on his legal pad, in his fine florid hand:

Wasting teaching-time
Windows open from the bottom—
the children might fly away
The rows untidy and Nicholas wandering off
Why can’t he stay still?

Then, he tells me, sotto voce,
as he leaves my classroom,
perhaps my final warning:
This will become part of your file.
The file–this small world’s bitter permanence.
Later, he tells me, in private,
the importance of “time-on-task”—
to maximize my chance
to make a difference
in these needful little lives.

Guilty as charged. But let me explain:
When that quiet one hides
in the classroom’s farthest reach—
remote as the moon,
at the radiator to warm,
or at the open window ready for flight,
she might like to hear her name said right:
Grizeth Abundancia Sepulveda, the Second
and the one who’s doing the saying
sounding sort of happy that she’s here.


Is There Life on the Moon?

The moon didn’t mean much then.
We were young and had only one another.
and held each other close enough
to see in the light we gave off.
That was as far as we wanted to know.
Sometimes, even with the moon to light us
we found ourselves stumbling,
between the Sea of Tranquility and the Canyon of Guilt,
much misunderstood by those, unlike us,
with low tolerance for shame, we could only suppose.
The moon pulled us this way or shoved us that
and we happily obeyed but, bright as we were,
we couldn’t find our way without a map.
And where were we going, anyhow?

These days, earthbound and no one around,
I prefer the dark, though I suppose
even the moon has its use sometimes—
if you’re lost at home,
and you’ve placed the furniture treacherously,
and wandered so far from sleep
what started as a yawn emerges as a sigh.
Truth is, I never cared for the old life,
and paid no mind to those who insisted
on landing on the moon,
or any place so much like here, airless and dim,
that I’ve come to know by heart.


© Alan Walowitz

Alan Walowitz is a retired teacher, school administrator, and professor of education.  He’s a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry.   His chapbook Exactly Like Love comes from Osedax Press. The Story of the Milkman and Other Poems is published by Truth Serum Press. From Arroyo Seco Press: In the Muddle of the Night, written with poet Betsy Mars. The Poems of the Air is available for free download from Red Wolf Editions.

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