Today is my last day of classes. Most significantly, today is the last day of the intro to creative writing class I’ve been teaching this semester. I will miss my class; they made me laugh & taught me about the Fibonacci sequence. They worked hard and wrote risky poems. We all have to recite a poem in honor of the last day, and then they will hand in their portfolios, and then I will want to hug them all, but I will not. And I will begin by reciting this, by James Schuyler:

 

Letter Poem #3

 

The night is quiet

as a kettle drum

the bullfrog basses

tuning up. After

swimming, after sup-

per, a Tarzan movie,

dishes, a smoke. One

planet and I

wish. No need

of words. Just

you, or rather,

us. The stars tonight

in pale dark space

are clover flowers

in a lawn the expanding

universe in which

we love it is

our home. So many

galaxies and you my

bright particular,

my star, my sun, my

other self, my bet-

ter half, my one