“‘This Be the Verse.’” She tilted her head, expectant. “Did I guess right?”
He laughed, absurdly happy that she somehow knew the exact poem he’d been poised to name. “Students would love it.Loveit. But we’d also get fired, and I enjoy eating.”
“As do I.” She grinned at him. “It’s a shame, though.”
He thought for a moment. “‘Those Winter Sundays’ by Robert Hayden is a worthy alternative. Or ‘Good Bones’ by Maggie Smith.”
“Agreed.” Letting go of her necklace, she put a check next to something on her paper. “I had those poems in mind as possibilities too.”
He nodded toward her notebook. “Why don’t you tell me about your choices? I’ll fill in any gaps, as necessary.”
Given his dubious attention span, better for her to spearhead the discussion as much as possible. Besides, he was curious about her selections and what they said about her, and about the way her mind worked, free of possible cross-contamination from his own choices.
Clicking her pen open and shut a few times, she frowned down at her list. “I had trouble narrowing the field of contenders, frankly. There are the usual suspects. Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christopher Marlowe, Phillis Wheatley, etc. Poems and poets who are part of any standard English curriculum.”
He’d been afraid of this. Worried her sometimes-rigid notions about literature would leave her stranded in the classics from now-distant centuries. They were classics for a reason, of course, but sometimes not the most immediately engaging choices for students, especially at seven-thirty in the morning.
“Honestly, though, I think modern poetry more often connects with high schoolers, and standardized testing ensures they’ll encounter the older classics at some point anyway.” With a little shrug, she dismissed her obligation to those poems. “So the majority of my suggestions are from the past century. Maya Angelou’s ‘Still I Rise.’ ‘I Am Offering this Poem’ by Jimmy Santiago Baca. ‘Who Said It Was Simple’ by Audre Lorde, and ‘[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]’ by Cummings. ‘I, Too’ by Langston Hughes. ‘Love is Not All’ by Edna St. Vincent Millay. ‘The friend’ by Marge Piercy.”
She went on for another minute or two, listing authors and poems he hadn’t realized she’d know, or hadn’t realized she’d appreciate. Lyrical poems, rage-filled poems, lovestruck poems, poems about marginalization and identity and humanity.
His favorites. So many of his favorites.
Oh, this was undiluted pleasure. To share a common language, to exult together in a searing turn of phrase, to find a kindred soul in poetry.
Still, he tried to hide his foolish giddiness and remain somber. Collegial.
“You’ve, uh, covered most of my suggestions already.” He checked his own list again. “I’d add ‘The Changeling's Lament’ by Shira Lipkin and ‘Instructions on Not Giving Up’ by Ada Limón.”
“Those are new to me.” With a few taps of her screen, she brought the poems up on her cell and read them, eyes intent on the words. “They’re important additions. Thank you, Griff. I’m bookmarking them.”
Which left only the last batch of poems he’d earmarked for possible use.
“There are a few…” He licked his dry lips and looked down at the scrawled titles on his paper, formulating what he would say. Hoping he didn’t injure her further. “I don’t know how comfortable you’d be with Mary Oliver’s ‘In Blackwater Woods,’ Sharon Olds’s ‘Cambridge Elegy,’ or possibly ‘One Art’ by Elizabeth Bishop. Maybe ‘The Watch’ by Danusha Laméris.”
All poems about loss and grief and death. Gorgeous poems. Heartrending poems.
She was silent.
“It’s just…” He tapped his pen against his notebook. “Students respond well to those particular poems, because mortality, the reality of death, is becoming so much clearer to them by high school. And for kids who’ve experienced loss, poetry can help them work through their emotions and maybe find comfort.”
Maybe you’d find comfort in those poems too, however fleeting, he carefully didn’t say.Just as I have.
At the time he’d jotted them on the paper, he hadn’t been sure Candy would know them. Now he was certain she did, but whether she’d turned to them or not, he couldn’t say.
“I reread—” She hesitated. “I reread Mary Oliver all the time. ‘Wild Geese’ and ‘In Blackwater Woods’ especially. They’re…important to me.” Her mouth trembled, but she pressed her lips tight and took a deep breath. “Those are great choices. Let’s add ‘To a Sad Daughter’ by Michael Ondaatje too.”
“I don’t think I’ve read that.” He stole her phone to look it up, then wrote himself a reminder to savor it more thoroughly later. “It’ll end up in this year’s curriculum, I think.”
Once he returned her cell, she claimed it. She stared down at the screen, where the Ondaatje poem remained on display, but he didn’t think she was reading it.
She was fidgeting in her chair, free hand clenched. Then she nodded, seemingly to herself, and made direct eye contact with him. “Yesterday, a parent came to school for a meeting with Principal Dunn.”
She paused for a moment, mouth white around the edges.
“From behind, I thought she looked like Dee. My sister. When I saw her, my heart…” She placed a palm over her chest. “It felt like being electrocuted. I called out to her, but she turned, and it wasn’t—It wasn’t her. The woman was a total stranger. Face to face, she didn’t look anything like my sister. I barely got to the bathroom before I started crying. And it was—”
Her jaw worked, and she stared up at the ceiling for a moment.
