He was the first one through my classroom door.Hand already up before I'd asked them why.I taught him everything. I should have taught him more.
He wrote the kind of essays I still storeand never told him, though I meant to try.He was the first one through my classroom door.
He left that June and didn't say before,a note the whole class passed, not knowing why.I taught him everything. I should have taught him more.
Now every soldier walking past the storecould be him, home, alive. I can't say why.He was the first one through my classroom door.
They say the letters never mention war,a joke that, even now, I can't deny.I taught him everything. I should have taught him more.
Some nights I grade the papers like before,and half expect his hand to catch my eye.He was the first one through my classroom door.I taught him everything. I should have taught him more.
About the villanelleA nineteen-line poem where two lines return again and again like a tide.
A villanelle has nineteen lines in six stanzas, and only two rhyme sounds. Its first and third lines come back as refrains, so the poem circles what it cannot stop thinking about, each return landing a little differently.
The shape Five tercets rhyming aba, then a quatrain rhyming abaa; line one and line three recur as refrains.
Listen for The same two lines coming back, meaning slightly changed by what surrounds them.
4 poems in this form →@imre
Thirty-one years teaching. Still can't stop noticing what actually stuck.
6 poems · 4 readings received · 5 written · 0 followers
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