Lessons from the Heart by John Clanchy

caught in the doldrums and a sailor shooting an albatross and them all dying except the sailor, or it is, but it turns out it’s symbolic as well and is actually about the death of the poetic imagination and Coleridge being afraid he’s lost his and won’t be able to write poetry any more. And you would never have thought this – just from reading the poem yourself, but when she explains it you think about how words can mean one thing but they can also mean other things …
    It’s a bit like one of those 3-D pictures where you can’t see the figure hidden in the detail at all for a long time, but when you finally do, then every time you look at it afterwards it’s the first thing you see and suddenly you can’t actually see it any other way and you wonder why everyone else can’t, it’s just so obvious. Until the next poem you read, of course, and you think it’s about a tiger in a forest, but it’s not, it’s about creativity as well, and divine energy in the world. So, when you get to the HSC, or Miss Temple’s classes anyway, you don’t just read any more, but you’ve got to keep guessing the real meaning as well. And, of course, Toni’s always taking her off, and if we’re going into the city, to a film or something, and I check the timetable and say, ‘We can get a train at 4.30,’ Toni will always say, ‘Yes, but what time does it really leave?’
    Miss Temple doesn’t take any notice, though, if we complain about having to look for all the hidden meanings all the time.
    â€˜If you’re not stretched,’ she says, ‘you’re not fully alive.’
    And she might be right, but some days you don’t want to be stretched, or you wonder if you’re even alive, let alone fully, and you’re feeling a bit sad and sorry for yourself or injured or something, and you’d just like to curl up somewhere – like under the house or in a log or something where no one will find you – and read a favourite book, one you loved as a child, say, and feel safe, and read it like it was the real story and not one that was hidden and you had to guess. But Miss Temple never lets you get away that easily.
    â€˜Have you made any journal entries yet?’
    â€˜Not yet, Miss Temple.’
    â€˜Well, don’t leave it too long,’ she says, ‘or you may never start. Bus trips can be mesmeric, I find. It’s very easy just to drift.’
    â€˜Yes, Miss Temple. As soon as I can think of something, I’ll start. I was thinking of a poem just before.’
    â€˜A poem’d be fine. But perhaps just do some free writing first. Just some notes to loosen up, get the ink flowing.’
    â€˜You mean now?’
    â€˜Anything will do, odd words, thoughts, things you see out the window,’ she says, as if we’re still in class. ‘Don’t focus on the product,’ she says to me now. ‘If you do that, you’ll only freeze. Focus on the process…’
    She moves away then, lurching and swaying back down the aisle of the bus, back past the rows of kids listening in their sleep, past Billy Whitecross who’s processing half the kangaroo population of New South Wales, past Luisa and Sarah whose hands, I know, will be locked in sleep, till she sinks into the back seat where only the top of her head – turned now towards the window, or towards Mr Jasmyne who sits between her and it – can be seen in the driver’s mirror. Unless you’ve got eyes in the back of your head, that is.
    The front of the bus is all glass and it nearly makes you giddy because you’re racing along at a hundred kilometres an hour and the glass in these tourist buses goes down almost to the floor, so passengers can see more easily I suppose, but if you’re in the front seat you get this funny feeling of the road rising up at you, and you feel it could nearly leap right through the