Alma Mater

My alma mater is a dirt road around a field on a Hagerstown farm, the first place I ran three miles.

My alma mater is a 13-foot Boston Whaler and a gray 1984 Honda Accord I learned to drive stick on.

My alma mater is the Holy Trinity church lot in Oxford where we met after school to play football and the marsh across the street from my house growing up.

My alma mater is a painted parking curb we commandeered for rail slides and 50-50 grinds and a loading dock behind Peebles.

My alma mater is Alternate Worlds comic book store and backyard wiffle ball.

There is a sign about Edgar Allan Poe at the University of Virginia, a school where he spent one semester. Always struck me as odd.

There are people and places, schools and books that taught me how to learn, or sparked something and whose sum total I count as my education. My alma mater is a series of imprints, scars, tattoos and impressions, which decorate and define my soul.