Schoolsville

Cheers

I love that you scrapped this poem! It is adorable, and I totally want to lift the idea!! Nice work!

November 21, 2011

Schoolsville

Scraplift of Sarah Brown at Designer Digitals

Designer Digitals Products:

Pattie Knox: Crayon Box Alphabets; Chalkboard Shapes No. 01; Felt Board Friends: School Box; Classified Clippings No. 02

Katie Pertiet: Whimsy Words No. 05; Bound Paper Pack No. 02; Crumpled Cardstock Overlays No. 02; Clean Stitched: White No. 03; Classic Cardstock: Snow Fun; Spot Dots Overlays; Drop Shadow Styles Collection

Art Warehouse: Class Act Paper Pack

Maplebrook Studios: Alphabetized Overlays

Studio Double-D: DoubleD Doodles: School No. 01

Cassie Jones: How's They Do That? No. 13: Bending Shadows

Font: Tahoma

Schoolsville

Glancing over my shoulder at the past,

I realize the number of students I have taught

is enough to populate a small town.

I can see it nestled in a paper landscape,

chalk dust flurrying down in winter,

nights dark as a blackboard.

The population ages but never graduates.

On hot afternoons they sweat the final in the park

and when it’s cold they shiver around stoves

reading disorganized essays out loud.

A bell rings on the hour and everybody zigzags

in the streets with their books.

I forgot all their last names first and their

first names last in alphabetical order.

But the boy who always had his hand up

is an alderman and owns the haberdashery.

The girl who signed her papers in lipstick

leans against the drugstore, smoking,

brushing her hair like a machine.

Their grades are sewn into their clothes

like references to Hawthorne.

The A’s stroll along with other A’s.

The D’s honk whenever they pass another D.

All the creative writing students recline

on the courthouse lawn and play the lute.

Wherever they go, they form a big circle.

Needless to say, I am the mayor.

I live in the white colonial at Maple and Main.

I rarely leave the house. The car deflates

in the driveway. Vines twirl around the porch swing.

Once in a while a student knocks on the door

with a term paper fifteen years late

or a question about Yeats or double-spacing.

And sometimes one will appear in a window pane

to watch me lecturing the wall paper,

quizzing the chandelier, reprimanding the air.

-- Billy Collins