Will This Do, Mrs. Appleyard?

 

Is this poem good enough, yet, 

Mrs. Appleyard?

I’ve drafted and rewritten over the years

Your stentorian voice in the back of my mind

“Slow down, child.

Take your time.

“Use internal rhythm to draw out the point

You’re trying to make

Think

Where does the rhyme hit?

When does the tempo break?

Use punctuation, 

To give the whole thing

Shape”

Have I got it right yet, 

Mrs. Appleyard?

Looming over me, from back in the my youth

A Roald Dahl character brought to long limbed life

Medusa hair and furious eyebrows, 

Sketched in flourishes and charcoal swoops

Bringing terror to adults and children alike

Like Tom Baker reimagined as

A middle school teacher

Your jacket of green and black check

Your sharp, inscrutable features

Reading my poems, at arm’s length, scowling

“This is a long, long way from completion.

“Land on a word that will echo

The heart and the core of your verse.

Make your audience 

Believe.

Take

Your

Time

Let it

Breathe.”

Will this do, 

Mrs. Appleyard?

Would you be suprised to know 

I still care what you’d think?

You live in the 

Folds of the 

Lines that I write

Each comma and full stop

A blink 

Of your basilisk eye.

Are you still alive?

Were you really that tall?

And the stuff that I write 

Would it satisfy whatever potential you saw?

In that boy with the hair and the NHS specs

He still listens to you

He’s still doing his best

To imagine a day when he hands in this book

And you tip down your glasses and read what he’s done

And the corners of your mouth twitch just a little

And you get a red pen and you write

In your wild looping scribble

“Not bad, I suppose.

Acceptable verse.

Not as good as your prose.

I’ve read better. 

But I’ve certainly read worse.”

Faint praise, hardly kind

But coming from you

With your knowledge like a forest and your

Mind like sharp knives 

Coming from you

That would do, Mrs. Appleyard.

That 

Would do.