Sure.
It’s inevitable.
I’m pushing seventy.

Some sixty years back,
I sat in the
ink-welled-desked-class-rooms
of seven strict, old-school
Irish school teachers
at P.S. 17,
City Island,
on the north-east-salt-water-border
of The Bronx.

Old ladies by then.
Some, at least thirty!
Spinsters.
Potential Nuns
but out of the habit,
chose,
instead,
to leave the convent behind
to teach
scruffy public school urchins,
like us.

Miss Donnelly, everyones Grandma.
Miss O’Malley, revealed History to me.
Miss Kilcullen, the original Elphaba,
Miss O’Conner, my first school-boy crush,
pushing her pencil onto my tongue,
to cure my slur.
Miss Egan, who taught only a year
but built my self esteem
like no one else.
Miss O’Kane of the short skirts
and the funny retorts.
Principal
Saint Mary Fitzpatrick
of the arthritic finger
always twisted to 11:00 o’clock,
reminding us that,
“Someone’s always watching you!”

All,
probably,
dead,
by now.

They were the front line
in a drum and fife
parade of devout adherents
to the creed that
Kenny could be taught to think,
“The Word of the Lord.
Amen.”

Since I could surf the waves
of their weighty lessons,
way back then,
and,
mostly,
have since,
there’s a chance
they were right.

They’ll find out,
soon enough.