By Ellen Stone
The old dog pulls me toward the school more often now, snuffles the edge
hoovering the dirt where once she found half a bagel with cream cheese,
scouts traces of Cheez-its or Goldfish the recess-kids leave behind.
I think of the building as mine somehow, doors from my own, track
the seasons through it. Tonight, geraniums bloom in the vestibule
where someone brings them each September. Soft light shines
on the playground asphalt when custodians come round to clean.
They move room to room, then pile bags of trash, recycling to take
out to the parking lot where giant dumpsters loom— and neighbors
grouse about who pulls up to unload mattresses, old wheelbarrows
that don't fit in trash cans, then in the darkness do the same.
Some Sunday nights, I've seen teachers in their rooms rounding
up supplies and laying out the next day's plastic tubs under lamps
they bring from home. When the district tears the building down
some year down the road, part of a bond we passed,
a new one likely won't have ground floor windows for security.
I think of this taking the path through the little woods across from
a classroom where kids and teachers wave sometimes. Tonight,
a little girl and her dad move toward their car out in the front.
I hear them first, the girl bouncing her basketball, a steady
heavy plop that sounds like nothing in the world except that ball.
I am not sure why this makes me want to cry, her sure hand
over and over, the same rhythm, on her way from nighttime practice
in the little gym. I think it might be because the ball is so routine,
the way it hits the tarry surface, and pops back up, and she controls
it there, so surely. I want to tell her dad to remember this—
how no matter whether she is the best in school, or even
likes to come each day, tonight she is the star of public school.
Before graduation
By Ellen Stone
Senior year, she floats
through school. I circle,
sound alarms, call in lifeboats,
emergency vehicles. She
carves a question in the air,
and full of not knowing, stands
silent, cork-like, full of space—
stuck, yet wanting to explode.
“You can do anything,” I say
a strange humming inside me.
Liar, liar. “One thing at a time.”
She looks at me, round face placid
as mossy lake water in July.
One day in the library, I find her
browsing fashion sites instead
of Algebra. She wears brilliant
blouses, gets a nose ring, does no
homework, might not graduate.
Later, on her tiny porch,
her cousin drapes long limbs
into the parking lot. A baby cries
inside. Her Chihuahua peers its tiny
face above the open screen door.
She warns me about speed bumps.
We drive to the strip mall library.
Study for two hours. I take her home,
see a lone redbud the spring wind
has taken down, fluttering, shagged
and beautiful, jagged stump jutting
adjacent to her parking lot stop sign.
Ellen Stone advises a poetry club at Community High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan, co-hosts a monthly poetry series, Skazat! and co-edits Public School Poetry. She taught special education in the Ann Arbor Public Schools for over 30 years and raised three daughters with her husband. Ellen is the author of The Solid Living World (Michigan Writers’ Cooperative Press, 2013) and What Is in the Blood (Mayapple Press, 2020). Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Ellen can be contacted at www.ellenstone.org.
