Love, the English Teacher
        (after Lawrence Lieberman)

Love, the English teacher, grades the snow.
She checks the drifts. From her gray pencils

drop white sheets. They bury themselves like leaves.
Whatever rots, worms itself into another tract,

Prefixes become roots, suffixes mend
the broken reed. I write a story

That lacks a theme, the plot's a thistle.
Love hates incoherence, the comma sighs.

How can I end what he cannot continue?
Once he promised that he would write.

The oak trees are turning red, the dog
has swallowed my composition, but Love says,

that's no excuse. She scores the fleece, she scores
the stone: everything I write I write alone.

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Copyright © 2011 Lois Marie Harrod All rights reserved
from Brief Term
Black Buzzard Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission