'Mum!' nudging her,
'It’s Mr. Wilson.'
The vague-eyed man
lifted his hat, but I saw
he no longer knew me:
a soft-faced child
under his silver hair.
And I was grown.
Always silver-haired,
he’d wander into classrooms,
his impromptu English lessons
more enthralling than stories.
He gave me then my grasp
of Latin roots.
Every child in the school
loved him. He knew us all by name.
[Poem #20]
This began as a game some bloggers played in 2008, to write about people who'd made an impact, in the same number of words as one's age, every day for a year. I did them less often and went on longer, adding one word each birthday. I stopped in 2016 and incorporated them into my main poetry blog. In 2019 I resumed the project and gave it its own blog again, with a new name, where it may unfold at its own (slow, intermittent) pace. I've labelled these verse portraits, but they're more like quick sketches: mere glimpses, impressions....
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments are moderated and will appear after being approved by the blog owner. If you can only comment anonymously, please include your name in the comment, just so I know who's talking to me.