In Cursive

First the bat, then the ball, Sister Agnes repeats

As she drifts down the aisles, her black robes

Brushing our desks, rosary beads clacking

While we fill one page after another,

Careful not to reverse a b or d, knowing

The way we wrote was an expression of our souls,

Sister circling my smudged erasures in red,

Giving Mary Case’s neat horizontal lines a gold star

And pinning it up on the bulletin board,

Mary who once asked right in the middle of catechism

If God was so merciful why wouldn’t He allow

Her brother to walk without braces? 

Not even the winter sparrows crowding the window ledge

Are able to lift our eyes from the pages

Where our tall letters touch the top and bottom lines,

Our o’s the dotted middle one, without a flourish or curl  

That might show hubris,

While Sister went from desk to desk, each one scarred

With hearts and names carved in crude block letters,

Oak desks as solid as our faith

And anchored to the floor.   

Robert Claps lives in eastern Connecticut with his wife and rescue dogs. Other work has appeared or is forthcoming in 2 Bridges, the Louisville Review, Tar River Poetry, and Margie: An American Journal of Poetry