Three years before Dover,
there was you, our class,
the Texas Education Agency,
a formal investigation,
a suspension that went public.

A week after that,
everybody in our school
had heard of Scopes,
Bishop Ussher,
Inherit the Wind,
Of Pandas and People.

Two weeks before that,
you shared with us
pictures of your trip
to the Galápagos, showed
us fossils of trilobites
from your personal collection.

Seven years after that,
the TBE voted to drop
language from its curriculum:
“Evolution’s just a theory.”

Ten years before that,
you won
Texas Teacher of the Year.

Four years after that,
you transferred to another district.

144 years before that,
Darwin published
On the Origin of Species.

145 years after that,
you left the profession.

540 million years before that
occurred the Cambrian explosion.