"What dew drops is, Miss W?"

Where do I start?
What dew drops is?
Should I address the syntactic structure of that question?
Should I even bother to correct the grammar here? Will it matter?
Or will this student roll their eyes because they've heard it all before?
They know how to speak properly. They simply choose not to.
Or that, at least, is the opinion of many of my contemporaries.
I don't know how I feel. I can't form an opinion about anything.
I'm too young.
Not much older than the 18-year-old squeezing into that tiny desk asking
What dew drops is?

Should I go into a scientific explanation about
how the heating and the cooling of the earth,
each rising and setting of the sun,
affects condensation?
I'm not even exactly sure how it works.
I apparently know more than this kid.
What dew drops is?

Have they ever been outside?
Have they been up early in the morning or late into the night?
Of course they have. This is high school.
There is no sleep.
When I was in high school, I woke up before dawn and worked late into the night.
I knew what dew was because it dampened my pant legs
as I walked to my car in the morning and at night.

What dew drops is?
Is this a real question?
Is this really what one addresses in a 12th grade English class?
Shouldn't I be sharing the true meaning of literature?
Or some life-altering insight into a canonical work?

No. I teach English at a high school.
And that means I answer questions like
"What dew drops is?"

And I love it.

The Christmas party was going well.
Everyone was smiling and laughing.
We were playing ***** Santa.
All was normal until his turn.
He walked up to the tree and,
Instead of picking a gift,
He froze.
As if this decision would be his last,
As if his life hung in the balance.
We all waited with our breath held--
On the edge of our seats--
Nothing happened.
The pastor tried to smooth things over
Move him along, go on with the game.
We all played along,
As if he weren't still standing there,
Staring at the tree.
I clocked his time:
Thirty seven minutes and forty three seconds.

He lifted his head,
Looked around,
Sat down,
As if nothing ever happened at all.

You are a gerund.
I am a verb.
Talking behind their backs
Will not solve our problems.
I opened the door and spoke.
I asked them to be quiet.
Standing behind me,
Like the mouse you are,
You pretended to want action.
I am action.

You are a gerund.
I am a verb.
Action leaps out of me
Like a plastic snake
On a loaded spring.
You were talking about a solution.
I wrote, I spoke,
I developed a plan.
Thinking about action,
Wishing and praying
For a conclusion was all
You came close to.
But stories are not written
Through inaction.
One well placed verb
Conquers a dozen nouns
And completes the sentence,

I hear a soft woof.
Bleary eyes peer at the clock:
3:03 a.m.
But time is of no matter
to a watchdog.
He stands stiff
ears perked
starting at the window.

The noise he makes
remind me of the Cowardly Lion:

Rrrrhuff
Softly
RrrrrrrrHUFF

He warns an imaginary intruder
or perhaps a neighbor
that he won't stand for their
feet near our sidewalk.

And although the danger isn't real
I'm grateful and proud.
Tell him he's a good boy,
but to get back in bed.

I was robbed once.
That's why I got him.

Reading a book in the sun
can get you so absorbed in
what you're reading
that when you look up

it's as if everything around you
were new.

You're staring at yourself
For the first time wondering:

Is that really me?

Is this my life?

Surely not.
I belong in this book.

I suppose that's what
happened
to Don Quixote.