On Security

In South Korea, it’s Teachers’ Day. The wind comes out of the west, snaps the flags, the clouds boil. My students give me a package of cookies and a note: We will always be grateful to you for your support and kindness. The Sewol ferry sinking, the deaths of hundreds of teenagers, is the only thing on the news. The girls laugh in the halls. They wear yellow ribbons to remember the dead. My facebook feed is full of wedding photos. Also advertisements. The Antarctic ice sheet has heard its death knell. It will melt, unstoppable.

School Poems

Old women

                   scrape weeds
from the cracks
                   so the pavement
can go on
                   another year.


. . .