-intermezzo-

The child was born to grow

Within two enclosures.

Both would come to him at near the same time.

This is before he discovered the outside world

And what it could do with its open-ended

Possibilities.

The schoolroom introduced the first of strangers
More probable to connect than passersby;

Requirements in posture and clothing;

A fixed order of personality and stringent

Attitudes of community apart from those

Accustomed to while inside his active house,

With its racket, its eclectic populace
And its ever-present scent of potted water
Heating atop the burners.

The puzzle of life was pieced together
With larger fragments here,

Assembled by the simple physical movement

From room to room,— the narrow hallways

Linking them with warm introductions

And from the outside entryway's evening mystique.

He learned what there was to know,
Where everything was,
What to do inside each room

And that the secrets of life were kept
Behind the closed dresser drawers.

Each passageway was naturally mapped-out

And he exhibited an expertise in negotiating
The crazy geography.

The closed-form topography of his school-desk
Was Plutonian, as cold and as distant.

He was left-handed in the world of right-

Handedness.
He smudged the watery ink
As his hand moved to do its letters across the page.

His grandmother believed the left hand
Was that of the Devil’s making.

Inside the buttoned-up classroom, her conclusion
Was daily justified.

The electric bells
Of school announcements
Rang sharply
Against the smoother grain
Of the female voice
Calling his name
At the bottom of the stairs
From the entry at the open screen-door
To the waiting supper tables
Of the kitchen to his active house.

Now,— let’s begin.

1.