Long Workschool Poems

For the School

The school I’ve worked for half my teaching years is feeling more
and more the woes of these hard times.  I walk the corridor,
remembering the better days before I felt this new malaise
which lies inside the core of me and matches all too eerily
the atmosphere that permeates this hallway and adheres
to all parts of this school I’ve worked for half my teaching years.

I pray to God I’ll never see the end of this old school.
So many came and went, yet I remain.  I’m someone who’ll
stay put until they close its doors. Ten years now I have walked its floors,
taught students and had fun with them. I hope it’s not a requiem 
I’m writing soon for this dear place, which much like an old friend,
Is apt to pass. . . . I pray to God I’ll never see the end. 


For Carolyn Devonshire's Contest: "The Work You Do"