Hanging back, one girl shows me
Poems she writes all the time,
Each one’s uncluttered, charged
With wonder that echoes in each Rhyme: looking round she drops
Her voice, “Sir laughed and called Them silly, said that they were Childish trash, not proper poetry.”
As we walk across the yard,
Throat tight, I spit out laughter:
“Forget about old green gills there,
Who was Blake’s English Master?”
Kevin McCann
Illustration: Claire Palmer