A Teaching Scene from Spring Forward directed by Tom Gilroy
This touching movie chronicles the unlikely friendship between Paul, just out of prison for armed robbery, and Murph, nearing retirement from his job with the parks department in a small town. Working together, driving from one outdoors job to another, they talk about this and that — routine, karma, apologies, dreams, infocommercials, betrayal, sex, fathers and sons, the little challenges and satisfactions of their daily lives.
One day in the fall they are out by a field rimmed with trees flush with brightly colored leaves. Their conversation turns to poetry. Murph relates that his brother told him a story about a Native American tribe that had the same word for "poetry" as they had for "breath." He adds, "So breathing was like a poem."
"Maybe that was why they didn't need books," Paul says as he surveys the beauty around him. "If breathing is like poetry and you walk around and this is what you see, you live in the poem."
The two men pause and are just present to each other and the place. Then in the distance a church bell chimes — a call to attention.
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