Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Wednesday, May 28, 2025.

Today's poem is by Timothy Murphy, and it's called Mentor.

I'll read it once, offer a few comments, and read it one more time.

Mentor for Robert Francis.

Had I known, only known when I lived so near, I'd have gone, gladly gone, foregoing my fear of the holy groan and the nearly great.

But I learned alone, so I learned too late.

As the academic school year is still wrapping up for some folks, and graduation season is not quite over.

In fact, I have some beloved former students who are graduating this week.

So many congratulations and blessings to Alex and Lucy and company.

This is a poem about student regret.

And as a former student turned teacher, I have felt this kind of regret acutely.

And I was very fortunate. I had some wonderful relationships with teachers who became mentors. And

some of those relationships have continued to this very day. But even so, there are others I feel

I could have learned more from

if I had been more receptive. And maybe, as this poem suggests, a little bolder. But this poem also

gives hope to the former student who feels these things and has these thoughts because this seems to be a

story of a rekindling of a friendship or a discovered friendship with a teacher maybe much later.

Had I known, only known, when I lived so near, implies that maybe now the speaker possesses

that knowledge. And though it's more difficult to spend time or communicate with the

mentor he has in mind, there seems to exist between the lines, the possibility anyway, that some form of this

relationship has still coalesced, albeit too late for the speaker's liking. The word mentor

...