She stood among the thin, goose-fleshed schoolgirls
with their full moon eyes
and straw braid hair.
Reciting Chaucer, Emerson, Frost,
as their feet scraped against
cured leather shoes,
toes curling with each word,
beauty lost in the hands of a sinister teacher,
no room for beauty with discipline.

Later she met the Janitor's boy in the broom closet,
She found beauty there, in his sweet, nonsense whispers,
fragments of Neruda bloomed in her mind,
Straw braid undone, leather shoes off.
Solomon's Song was written in his fingertips,
rough from mop handles and water buckets.
Their innocence burned in the dark,
their words unclouded,
Memorized verses on their breath,
they meant every line.
And she knew this was what the poets wrote of.