April 2021
Sarah White
sarahwhitepages@gmail.com
Bio Note: If these poems confess some ambivalence about doing what I used to do for a living, I hope it didn’t weigh too heavily on my students at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster Pennsylvania. In retirement, living in New York City, I divide my time between writing and learning to paint.

The End of My Career

The three dead boys came marching up the aisle.
					—Mark Twain
 
I don’t like the word Career. 
It’s too much like careen
as if, in order to succeed 
in work of my own,
I had to crash down a mountain 
or roll down a dune.
 
I’ve posted my Letter of Intent 
to Retire. I’m still waiting
for someone to respond.
 
I feel like Tom Sawyer
attending his own funeral, 
The melodeon
pipes a poignant tune
as I hide in a niche 
at the rear of the church. 
I hear the neighbors moan:
 
“She never got it together.
What a shame!
She would have amounted
to something  
if she hadn’t quit
doing what she did…”
 
I wish somebody
would tell me what it was!

The Cab Driver Says I Look Like a Teacher

It must be the drab
down coat I wear, the hair
neither colored nor curled,
 
the eyes tinged
with inky quizzes
and frown lines
 
as if the driver
were a writer
and I a character
 
remembering 
a Freshman girl
reciting Verlaine
 
on her last morning
in the world—O Marion
what have you done?—
 
remembering Borges
coming to the campus
and the Dean
 
coming to my office
saying I had tenure
thanking him
 
and thinking 
nobody will ever
make love to me again.
Originally published in The Unknowing Muse (Dos Madres Press, 2014)
©2021 Sarah White
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