MARION, VIRGINIA
Katherine finds a job teaching math and French
in a school that’s segregated, like all those she attended.
After classes, she plays piano and instructs the chorus,
corrects papers in her classroom rather than walking
back to the room she rents at the principal’s house.
Sometimes she watches the chemistry teacher
coach football, basketball, or baseball.
After a game, they walk together.
Jimmie laughs as he describes a student struggling
with a test who got up from his seat to sharpen a pencil.
He spun the handle like a fishing reel,
pretended to hold on to a rod and pull in a fish.
Katherine thinks she would have sent the boy
straight back to his chair, but Jimmie laughs
at bumbled experiments in the lab, enjoys mistaken
explosions, thinks small fires liven up equations.
She tells Jimmie about the rigor with which Miss Turner
taught math, but how she made it seem transcendent.
When she complains of young people bent on trouble,
he teases, I suppose you were a perfect student.
She lifts an eyebrow the way her father did
to remind her of the use of silence, then lifts a corner
of her mouth to show she’s ready for strong words.
Jimmie nods. I hope I’m around when
you find what seems worth fighting for.