So beautiful these children that I teach, once one learns to look beyond the thorns the needle teeth and bifurcated horns they use to keep their minds beyond my reach. Like candles burning in an ancient church they cast their awkward shadows in my soul; rough diamonds tossed into a beggar’s bowl; strange-seeming answers to a heart-felt search. They drag me to their battlefields and cry, “See now our dreams, our laughter and our tears, and share with us the horror of our fears, for we are bright and wish to touch the sky. Give us your heart! For we would learn to fly, and have no love for those who fear to die.”