Kijun Times

Elbows on dry books, we dreamed

Past Miss Willow Bangs, and lessons, and windows,

To catch all day glimpses and guesses of the greening woodlot,

Its secrets and increases,

Its hidden nests and kind.

And what warmed in us was no book-learning,

But the old mud blood murmuring,

Loosening like petals from bone sleep.

So spring surrounded the classroom, and we suffered to be kept indoors,

Droned through lessons, carved when we could with jackknives

Our pulsing initials into the desks, and grew

Angry to be held so, without pity and beyond reason,

By Miss Willow Bangs, her eyes two stones behind glass,

Her legs thick, her heart

In love with pencils and arithmetic.

So it went — one gorgeous day lost after another

While we sat like captives and breathed the chalky air

And the leaves thickened and birds called

From the edge of the world — till it grew easy to hate,

To plot mutiny, even murder. Oh, we had her in chains,

We had her hanged and cold, in our longing to be gone!

And then one day, Miss Willow Bangs, we saw you

As we ran wild in our three o’clock escape

Past the abandoned swings; you were leaning

All furry and blooming against the old brick wall

In the Art Teacher’s arms.