Today would have been my mother's 79th birthday. These two are poems we constructed together as a teaching exercise to show children how to put together thoughts about a single subject to create something approaching poetry without using rhyme. In the years since we wrote them Blackboard has become something of an historic document.

BLACKBOARD

Not board, but canvas,
not black, but green,
dusty with yellow and white,
bounded on either side
by a wooden frame - hard,
final, and straight.
But, between,
the board itself
is a never ending strip,
an endless stream . . .
It isn’t large,
and yet for now
it fills
my entire universe.
The chalk dust clings
to my hands,
my clothes,
and my nostrils -
soft and insidious,
while the screech
of chalk on canvas
fills my ears.

Now it means captivity,
but one day,
when all the miscellaneous facts
written on its surface
have been assimilated,
it may well prove
my passport
to the future.


A ROSE

A rosebud,
red
touched with yellow,
with a long, green stem,
shining leaves,
and small purple thorns;
the petals,
soft as silk,
are furled,
not yet in bloom,
curled
small, tight and secret
about its heart;
Its fragrance is fragile
yet evocative
of all the great occasions in our lives -
birth,
congratulations,
contrition,
forgiveness,
love,
marriage,
illness,
death . . .
all embodied
in a single
flower.