Writing Workshop, Summer 1970

My teacher was eager to please,

sweating in his suit

like an old fashioned comic

working hard for a laugh.

Pursed his lips at mention of a place name,

began to cheer.

“Norfolk, Norfolk!

We don’t smoke

And we don’t chew

And we don’t go with

The boys that do!

Norfolk!”

Folk said like fuck.

The same year he was my teacher,

he’d lost his professor job,

said he had a PhD though he didn’t.   

His children,

saying goodbye, starting over.

Did he feel it?

When he died it was in the New York Times.

In my poem for the last day I wrote

revelant for relevant.

He laughing, charmed.

Perfect, he said. Don’t change a thing.

He was being kind, I still believe.

How stupid I was, putting that word in a poem.

How harsh my judgments,

how tightly I hold onto my own shame.

Remembering him standing before us,

flushed with heat and joy, jumping into the air in a buck and wing,

I think there is more I could learn from him,

May still.

Jane Snyder's stories have appeared in Five On The Fifth, Pithead Chapel, and Summerset Review. "Writing Workshop, Summer 1970" is her first published poem. She lives in Spokane.