Kathryn Jacobs

SCHOOLING RAYMOND
    For Raymond, 1987-2005

He multiplied like singing in his mind:
amazed the calculator even - well,
until he reached five digits. He could spell
at three, if someone covered up the lines
that criss-crossed up and under; otherwise
he read in skips, like jump-rope. In his mind
he wove brocades in shortcut: he was fine.

On paper, there are problems. Yes, he tries:
the columns won't line up right. And the words
keep shifting: he can hold them still a while,
but it's so tiring to march single-file
when they would rather swing-dance. It occurs
to no one that the child who struggles there
could think in circles round them, anywhere....

* * *

RINDS

He empathized so earnestly you felt
deficient suddenly. The rest of us
grow rinds, like melons: out-and-out assault
may crack us, but the everyday distress

of wind and weather leaves us unimpaired.
But him - he had that stricken look you see
on outraged six-year olds, still unprepared
for problems you can't fix. As if a tree

decided it could do without it's bark,
or coconuts stayed green and jelly-soft.
Like baby-skin - which lasts until we walk,
then stings us into calluses. We're tough.
A wind like sandpaper, a world gone wrong:
The rest of us grow rinds, but he moved on.

* * *

TENDER MERCIES

You couldn't toughen him, although we tried:
you simply cannot make scar-tissue "take"
on certain souls. But that's not why he died:
you don't need calluses when strangers break
the fall that they see coming. Half the time
he never knew the hoops that they walked through,
or what a web of intricate design
dissolved before him. And they never knew
exactly why they did it; just a boy
who trusted them, and had the sort of face
that people want to help; or, to enjoy
an innocence that tends to go to waste
in worlds like this, where now a bitter clerk
may likewise share in his mysterious work.

Kathryn Jacobs is a poet and medievalist at Texas A & M - C, with a chapbook called Advice Column forthcoming at Finishing Line Press and a doctorate from Harvard. Her poetry has been published in a wide variety of journals, such as New Formalist, Measure, Acumen (UK), Eclectic Muse (five poems), Barefoot Muse, and Poetry Midwest among others. She has also publish scholarship - another book, and sundry articles.