By Jeffrey Maraviles
“A gardener of souls, a nurturer of dreams,
A teacher tends his garden with such care,
With gentle hands and knowledge finely gleaned,
He cultivates the hearts that blossom there.
But now the time has come for him to go,
To leave the garden that he’s tended so.
His heart is heavy as he takes his leave,
For in this garden, he’s found so much to grieve.
He’ll miss the blooms that brightened every day,
The words that flourished under his gaze,
The stories that unfolded in his way.
But though he goes, his legacy will stay.
For in the hearts of those he taught,
His garden will forever be sought.
But in his heart, an emptiness will dwell,
A garden that he loved, but couldn’t keep, Farewell.”
The poem is a metaphor that describes a teacher as a gardener who tends to the growth and development of his students, who are represented as blooms in his garden.
The poem expresses the teacher’s sadness and melancholic feeling as he has to leave his students and the garden he has tended to.
The poem is called a sonnet because it follows the traditional structure of a sonnet which is a 14-line poem written in iambic pentameter and usually follows a specific rhyme scheme. The poem is written in traditional Shakespearean sonnet form abab cdcd efef gg.