Greg Williamson Verse-Virtual 2016 May

May 2016

I teach in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. My newest book is The Hole Story of Kirby the Sneak and Arlo the True, published by The Waywiser Press. My website is gregwilliamsonbooks.com

Drawing Hands

Way on back in the reign of Mrs. Duke
All of the small subjects went in fear
Of her, her stormy eyes, her thunderhead
Of hair. Daily on the wall's clean slate,
She wrote the language he would learn to live
With: words and rules and examples of the rules
Whereby nouns adverbly verb their objects,
So that he might call things as he saw them.

There in the classroom, under a cloud of chalk,
How smoothly his attention used to glide
To the glass, to water braided on the glass,
Clearly clear, and standing still as it ran
Away, and deeper into the misted day
Where fields began dissolving into felt
And a stonefaced house reflected on the street.
Then the ruler would crack across his hand.

That boy lived my life ago, and whether
I leave him soloing at his desk today
Under the unbroken rules of Mrs. Duke
Or walking home through the mystifying day,
He finds his winding way back here somehow,
Where I sit high in the head of the house,
Writing and rewriting him, and watching the rain,
Which is what I came in out of for.