Glenn G. Coats

Tending the Lambs

1968. The church is peaceful. Voices rise and fall like the sounds of water. A boy from the mountains begins to jerk arms and legs, a teacher guides the young man to the floor; folds her sweater and slides it under his head. When the seizure passes, the teacher finds a quiet corner and talks softly to the boy. A student volunteer plays Shoots and Ladders with a child who has Down Syndrome. Another comforts the girl who sobs over her sandwich while the nurse from the college dabs cotton balls of calamine on a face and neck swollen from poison ivy.

There are no lesson plans, no directions to move a child from point A to point B, no great expectations for students who do not fit into the public school.

Parents and grandparents, friends and neighbors, drive down skinny dirt roads and weave their way to the Baptist Church. They drop children off, knowing they are in good hands. At the end of each day—that alone—seems to be enough.

summer stream
the flash of stones and fish
in the shallows

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About the Author

Glenn G. Coats lives with his wife, Joani, in Carolina Shores, North Carolina. His books include two recent collections of haibun, A Synonym for Gone (Snapshot Press, 2021) and Degrees of Acquaintance (Snapshot Press, 2019), and Furrows of Snow (Turtle Light Press, 2019), which won an honorable mention in the Haiku Society of America’s 2020 Merit Book Awards.