Beginnings

At the far end of the hall, bending

around the gym, a stage, and the cafeteria

of the West Bath Elementary School, 1960, September,

we began in Mrs. DePalmer’s room, first grade’s beginnings,

colors and shapes and sense forming into Dick

and Jane and Sally, and new words, transforming

sound onto paper, triple lined, blue and red and rough,

lines and loops expressing themselves in the silence

of her classroom as we worked, diligently and carefully,

sitting there in our little desks, neatly rowed and assigned,

legs a-dangle, swinging, even as we grasped our pencils,

yellow and new, in our tiny hands, tracing letters

dashed in outline, learning our As and Bs and Cs,

As and Bs and Cs, in turn, becoming words,

“cat” and “dog” and “mom” and “dad” leaping from a page

into sentences, action set in motion, doing,

like us, something, us sitting in our little desks,

neatly rowed and assigned, tracing lines, carefully connecting

the dots that would lead us onward, move us upward,

across the hall and into the second grade.