On my 30th in the classroom

I thank my thirtieth star I kicked like a

donkey at the fatty Montag youth

who's all mouth, hair & delicate grin,

and chippy school play s/he's always in:

the years of which the first began with

and continued down to the second

and a sort of third of a Life dissolved

in pits and thunderbolts! noxious stairs

with the tykes battering down glass--

they who full flower go into my classroom

believing my lone Self so help me or else!

More than clown but less than Toparch:

I dared each one, up and down, here,

I'd say, I-I did til the next terror came

and I'd expel, say, boys with the girls--

At these times I also boasted a myriad

smiles til a release, from sameness, just at

my thirtieth: I the Pius and coach, who

wiped filth off their noxious stairs

(2013)