Marie Kane

SHARDS

The hand will not do her bidding-
not fasten a button, nor a necklace, nor grasp the chalk, which is
her livelihood if she really thinks about it, and the first time

she dropped the yellow chalk this year was nothing,
only a bother to bend, retrieve, and place the broken pieces
on the dusty chalk shelf near the fancy blue and green chalk

and continue her talk on the failure of John
and Elizabeth Proctor's marriage in The Crucible.
The second time she dropped the yellow chalk,

she felt her balance go when she bent to pick it up. She leaned toward
the shards scattered on the floor, and thought she heard
someone say, "Butterfingers...."

That day the notes on the board were almost unreadable but she read
them as if they breathed the passion she felt. Soon, shards of
chalk littered the floor at the front of her room

and despite her lack of control or maybe because of it she let herself
play with the idea of fashioning a mosaic with the green, blue,
and orange chalk to mix with the yellow.

She gave up on her hands working well and still trusted her legs
till the day a book bag interfered with her progress
and down she went, as ungraceful as Ethan Frame with a woman.

Her husband tenderly kept the bruise from swelling
and the ice felt good, she thought, better
than the classroom floor. She told him, "Don't worry,

the body is resilient!" and so, ready again, she stood-
knowing The Scarlet Letter awaited
and that Hester and Arthur and Pearl could not, would not, be denied.

Marie Kane is the 2006 Bucks County (PA) Poet Laureate. She has received a recognition award for her poetry from the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts, and an award for her teaching of young writers from The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. She has been a featured reader at the New Jersey State Museum, James A. Michener Art Museum, the International House in Philadelphia, and at many universities, bookstores and libraries. Her writing credits include The River, Stirring, The Bucks County Writer, U. S. 1 Worksheets, and the Delaware Valley Poets Anthology. She recently was awarded second place in the 2008 Poetry Society of New Hampshire's international contest. In the last few years, she has thoroughly enjoyed being a juror in regional and national scholastic poetry contests. Because of MS, she recently retired from teaching high school English, but is pleased to continue to help young poets as a coach and tutor. She is very happily married to Stephen Millner, an artist.