Primary School

My four children learned to read here, to talk back
And repent in the principal's office, to unlock
The ivory puzzle-box of the multiplication tables,
To utter a few lovely phrases of Japanese,
To marry and give birth and die in imaginary
Covered wagons laboring from St. Louis to Sacramento.

Today my daughter read an essay to the assembly,
And my youngest son played a Mozart air on his fiddle,
So for the last time I visited their first school, Easterly,
Namesake perhaps of the morning star, that shines
Only a little while before and after dawn, though secretly
It is also the evening star, and the errant planet Venus.

Fourteen years under this tangle of elm trees, lindens,
Black walnuts, pin oaks that rust bronze in October,
Maples that launch their bright wings downwards in April.
I wrote my name on a paper badge marked "visitor,"
And kept it afterwards, as if it might somehow later
Re-open the doors, sealed now by the guardian of years.

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