To Certain Students
       

On all the days I shut my door to light,
Al l the nights I turned my mind from sleep

While snow fell, filling the space between the trees
Till dawn ran its iron needle through the east,

In order to read the scribblings of your compeers,
Illiterate to what Martian sense they made

And mourning my marginalia's failure to move them,
You were what drew me from stupor at the new day's bell.

You with your pink hair and broken heart.
You with your knived smile. You who tried to quit

Pre-law for poetry ("my parents will kill me").
You the philosopher king. You who saw Orpheus

Alone at the bar and got him to follow you home. You
Green things, whose songs could move the oldest tree to tears.

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Copyright © 2015 V. Penelope Pelizzon All rights reserved
from Whose Flesh is Flame, Whose Bone is Time
Waywiser Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission