In-Class Pantoum

The photo is cracking me up because I have a brand new computer which has a folder called "My Pictures" none of which are mine. This here is one of them. It is not a photo of a pantoum, a big leaf maple nor a madrone.

We hunched over our papers in a circle on the shiny blue shag rug as the electricity project trifold displays made working at desks impossible. It amazes me how much writing happens at school under such constrained circumstances.

Here's what I did:

Pacific Madrone Pantoum

Children's Tree of my childhood
in woods behind my house
branches like ladder rungs
bark peeled, revealed smooth butterscotch.

In woods behind my house,
refuge from yelling and chores,
bark peeled, revealed smoothness.
I longed to write messages there.

Refuge from yelling and chores,
I liked you best when we were alone,
longed to write messages on your bark
in the bird-loud shelter of your shade.

I liked you best when we were alone,
branches like ladder rungs
in the bird-loud shelter of your shade
oh Children's Tree of my childhood.

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My neighbor Debbie Mansergh named that madrone "The Children's Tree". I remember thinking that was a too dumb too common name for it. I of course did not share this thought aloud. I also did not come up with a better, more appropriate name, for fear of being laughed at, meanwhile (see above) inwardly laughing at braver bossy Debbie, who had Archie comics piled four feet high in her closet. My mother did not approve. I thought Debbie was glamourous and daft, especially when she went on a diet when she was nine and I was eight. She held grudges. One winter I hit her with a snowball that had a rock in it during a neighborhood snowball fight. I did not know the snowball had a rock in it. I apologized. One day that summer I rang her doorbell, opened her screen door and she whammed me in the face with a freezer frozen snowball from winter. Jeez. Work with fourth graders return to fourth grade. Next year I have been threatened with the possibility of working with kindergartners. Watch this space.